This lecture is part of the Biennial CRG African History Conference 2024.

Using Noni Jabavu (1919–2008) as a starting point for the lecture, Athambile Masola will consider the ways in which biographical writing is central to responding to the complex ways in which black women’s histories in particular are rendered. Despite her hypervisible writing career, a transnational experience, her story is about invisibility, hypervisibility, erasure and elsewhereness. The lecture will explore the archival and
methodological challenges of writing histories in this context.

Athambile Masola is a writer, researcher and an award-winning poet based at the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. Her debut collection of poetry, Ilifa (Uhlanga Press, 2021), is written in isiXhosa. She is the co-author of the children’s history book series, Imbokodo: Women Who Shape Us (Jacana Media, 2022), with Dr Xolisa Guzula. Her latest book is a collaboration with Makhosazana Xaba; a collection of Noni Jabavu’s columns from 1977, A Stranger at Home (Tafelberg, 2023).

Download flyer