Visiting
scholar - Helen Moffett
Helen
Moffett is currently a Research Fellow at the African Gender Institute,
and is physically based in the Centre for African Studies (ph.
021-650-2308) at the University of Cape Town.
She received her PhD from the English Department at UCT, where she
taught for eight years. She has held fellowships at Princeton University,
Mount Holyoke College and has been a Rockefeller Associate at UCT’s
African Gender Institute. She has also worked in publishing, and was
Oxford University Press’s academic editor for four years. She also works
as a freelance academic, writer, editor and trainer. Clients include New
Africa Books, Tafelberg Press, University of Cape Town (various
individuals and departments, including Adult Education and Extra-Mural
Studies Department, the Centre for Conflict Resolution, Legal Aid Clinic),
Human Sciences Research Council, Robben Island Heritage Centre, University
of the Western Cape (School of Government), Cape Technikon, The Institute
for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), Cape Town City Council, Cosmopolitan and Conde Nast magazines,
and the Sports Science Institute of South Africa. Her most recent editing
project was In Our Lifetime: the
biography of Walter and Albertina Sisulu, by Elinor Sisulu. She is
currently writing a book on the relation between race and rape in
post-apartheid South Africa; both Rape Crisis (South Africa) and Womankind
Worldwide (UK) use her work on this topic as part of their training and
education material. She also specializes in conducting writing and
research workshops for academics and researchers who do not have English
as one of their mother tongues.
Publications:
2003 (with Nahla Valji and Lee Anne de la Hunt): “Where are the women? Gender discrimination in refugee policies and practices.” Agenda 55.
2003:
“Reverse Swing: Levelling the playing fields” and “Reverse Swing:
Field of dreams.” Associate producer, researcher and scriptwriter for
two television documentaries on cricket and transformation in South
Africa, flighted on national TV (Supersport) in January.
2002:
“Entering the Labyrinth: Coming to Grips with Gender Warzones, using
South Africa as a Case Study” in Partners
in Change: Working with Men to end Gender-Based Violence, United
Nations INSTRAW, Santo Domingo.
2002
(with Elaine Salo): ed. Associate
Publications 2000. African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town.
2002
(with Es’kia Mphahlele): second edition of Seasons
Come to Pass: A poetry anthology for Southern African students, Oxford
UP, Cape Town. [Currently prescribed at over half the tertiary education
colleges and universities in Southern Africa.]
2001:
“Forum: What challenges do feminists in the U.S. face when trying to
think globally?” Transformations:
The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, Vol. XII, No. 1,
Spring, 111-112.
2000
(with Lee Anne de la Hunt): “Gender Training Guidelines for Immigration
Officials Interviewing Women Refugees.”
Track Two: Journal of Conflict Resolution in Southern Africa,
December.
1996:
“Magic Realism and the novels of Zakes Mda.” Cape Librarian, April.
1994
(with Es’kia Mphahlele): Seasons
Come to Pass: A poetry anthology for Southern African students. Oxford
UP, Cape Town.
1994:
“Women in the Media: ‘Little victories and big defeats.’” Sash, 36/3, January, Black Sash, Cape Town.
1993:
“Postmodernism and the politics of difference.” Democracy in Action, Idasa, August.
She
has also ghosted, rewritten, reworked for the South African market,
researched or co-authored numerous works in her capacity as a professional
editor/writer. She is also seeking a publisher for a monograph on gendered
sibling dynamics in the Rossetti family, which she completed at Mount
Holyoke.
Academic
papers and lectures
“Constructing Sexual Aggression and Vulnerability: further thoughts on the body politics of rape.” Paper commissioned by Womankind Worldwide as part of their campaign against “body illiteracy”; also posted on their website (www.womankind.org.uk), July/August 2003.
“Speaking the Unspeakable: Narratives surrounding the Rape of Children.” Paper commissioned by Womankind Worldwide as part of their campaign against “body illiteracy”; also posted on their website (www.womankind.org.uk), July/August 2003.
“Stemming the tide:
countering public narratives of sexual violence.” Paper written for
Womankind Worldwide as part of their presentation at the Commission on the
Status of Women in New York City; also posted on their website
(www.womankind.org.uk), February/March 2003.
“Testing
Western theories about rape in the South African context: new models for
education and activism.” Colloquium at Rape Crisis Cape Town, August
2002.
“‘Telling
stories, telling lies’: Erasure and Distortion in Narratives of Rape and
Race in popular South African discourse.” University of the Western Cape
English Dept Guest Lecturer Series, July 2002.
“Speaking
the Unspeakable and Thinking the Unthinkable: the Failure of Rhetoric in
Discourses of Rape.” Association for Rhetoric and Communication in
Southern Africa Symposium Rhetoric
at the Margins, Roma, Lesotho, July 2002. (Published as part of
conference proceedings.)
“Race,
Rape and Rhetoric: Constructing Narratives of Sexual Violence in
Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Centre for African Studies, University of
Cape Town, May 2002.
“The
Grammar of Rape: Mental health implications for society and the survivors
of violence.” Dept of Psychiatry and Mental Health Academic Lectures,
University of Cape Town Medical School, February 2002. This paper also
presented (by invitation) in slightly different format at the South
African Colleges of Medicine Symposium on Violence in May, 2002.
(Published as part of conference proceedings.)
“Second-hand
tools: whose language do we use when we speak of rape?” Panel
contribution for African Feminisms Conference at All Africa House,
University of Cape Town, July 2001.
“Monsters
and Masks: the Problem of Representing the Rapist in South Africa.”
African Gender Institute Associates’ Conference, July 2001. Available at
http://www.uct.ac.za/org/agi/assoc/hmoffett.htm.
Guest
lecturer at The College of New Jersey’s Women’s Studies Department for
two weeks in November 2000, teaching global feminism and feminist theory.
“Sex,
Lies and Manuscripts: gender and the problematizing of biography in the
case of Christina Rossetti.” Five College Women’s Studies Research
Center, Mount Holyoke, April 1999.
‘“Bulldozers-with-Breasts’: the transformation of African stereotypes of the feminine in the post-apartheid works of Zakes Mda.” FCWSRC, Mount Holyoke, Oct 1998.
“Jane
Austen goes to Hollywood (and gets an Oscar): late-twentieth century media
and the appropriation of Austen in film and television.” University of
Alaska Fairbanks, Sept 1998.
“The
emergence of magic realism in the post-apartheid novel: Zakes Mda’s Ways
of Dying and She Plays With the
Darkness.” AUETSA Conference, University of the Western Cape, July
1996.
“En-gendering
violence: discourses of apartheid and gender in South Africa.”
International Center seminar series, Princeton, Nov 1992.
“Telling
home truths: autobiographical fiction by black South African women
writers.” University of Alaska Fairbanks, Sept 1992.
“Cross-gendered
intertextuality between the works of Christina and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti.” University of Alaska Fairbanks, Sept 1992.
“Brothers
and the Brotherhood: rewriting Christina Rossetti.” Women in 19th
and 18th Century Literature Conference, University of Oregon,
Eugene, May 1992.
“Sibling
Rivalry and the difficulty of recovering Christina Rossetti.” Visiting
Fellow seminar series, Princeton, 1992.
