Virtual Lecture Series
The Association for Cultural Studies is delighted to announce its Virtual Lecture Series: an ongoing programme of online presentations by cutting-edge cultural studies theorists and practitioners.
The next talk in this series, by Ahtziri Molina Roldán (Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico), Bianca Garduño (Universidad Mayor Nacional de San Marcos, Peru) and Anna Cristina Pertierra (University of Technology Sydney, Australia), titled ‘Cultural institutions in Mexico and precarisation of creative labour’ (followed by a Q&A), will take place on March 19th, 4PM Central Standard Time/ CST, México (GMT -6) (more information underneath).
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Ahtziri Molina Roldán (Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico),
Bianca Garduño (Universidad Mayor Nacional de San Marcos, Peru) and
Anna Cristina Pertierra (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) – Cultural institutions in Mexico and precarisation of creative labour
March 19th, 2025
4PM Central Standard Time/ CST, México (GMT -6)
Abstract: The Mexican state has been an active agent in the construction of cultural institutions and infrastructure for more than a century. But the symbolic and political currency of the cultural sector is not reflected in stable conditions for creative workers who exist precariously. In this occasion, we explore a manifestation of the simultaneous state of prominence and precarity in procurement regimes implemented by federal government cultural agencies. We consider three crucial moments: as background policies before the Covid-19 crisis, support programmes from the l government of Mexico City to employ creative workers during the pandemic, and significant resulting policies that emerged from that critical moment. We examine the content and arguments of these programmes to highlight how cultural policies and institutional structures developed by the government are a continuation, and even a deepening, of the already precarious work opportunities in the cultural sector. Through policy analysis and qualitative interviews, we contrast the officially stated goals of government institutions with the lived experiences of creative workers.
Bios:
Ahtziri Molina Roldán is a Doctor in Sociology and Director and professor at the Centre for Arts Studies of the Universidad Veracruzana. Coordinates a comparative project about arts legislation and policies in seven countries in Latin America. Her research focus on the artistic community, cultural management, cultural policies and cultural consumption. She is president of the Latin American Network for Art Research,
Bianca Garduñois a Doctor in Social Science, sociologist, researcher and professor at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru. She has collaborated as a researcher with Western Sydney University, Universidad Iberoamericana, and Centre for Arts Studies of the Universidad Veracruzana. She is a member of the Latin American Network for Art Research, and currently working on a comparative project about arts legislation and policies in Latin America. Her research interests are creative work, artistic careers, cultural policy, and higher education.
Anna Cristina Pertierra is the Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Professor Pertierra is an anthropologist with international expertise in consumption and material culture, urban modernities, and media and popular culture in the Global South. Regionally, her work focuses on Latin America (especially Cuba and Mexico) and the Asia-Pacific (Philippines). She has been the recipient of three Australian Research Council-funded research projects, including as lead Chief Investigator on the current project New Consumers of the Global South.
Upcoming VLS events (more details TBA):
April 24th, 4 PM South Africa Standard Time/ SAST (GMT +2) – Athambile Masola (University of Cape Town), ‘Intshumayelo and the religion of imagination’
May – Gilbert Caluya (Deakin University)
June – Siddhart Soni (University of Southampton)
July – Rosemary Overell (University of Otago)
August – Hsuan Hsu (University of California)
September – Lisa Calvente (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
October – Camilla Mørk Røstvik (University of Aberdeen)
November – Dianlin Huang (Communication University of China)
December – Sarah Bufkin (University of Birmingham)
January 2026 – Danzhou Li (Shenzhen University)
Abstracts and links to the recordings of the past talks can be found here
Abstracts of the upcoming talks
Athambile Masola (University of Cape Town, South Africa) – Intshumayelo and the religion of imagination
April 24th, 2025
4 PM South Africa Standard Time/ SAST (GMT +2)
Bio: The black church in black working class communities has often been the site of disdain. In this lecture I want to consider the black church as a site of possibility. By centering intshumayelo (loosely the sermon) as a poetic, cultural and spiritual device, I consider the ways in which the rituals in a black Methodist Church in Khayelitsha have prophetic value which speak to the lived reality of the people who attend the church. Borrowing from Hortense Spillers’s lecture “Fabrics of History: The Rhetoric of Sermons and the Problem of Black Culture” I adopt an anthropological posture as a congregant in my own church and revisit a sermon delivered in January 2025 by umama uNodala. The singularity and the particularity of this specific intshumayelo is significant purely for my subjectiveness. It is intshumayelo which moved me by its poetics of possibility and imagination in its aim of edifying a community rendered as a social problem. The historical and spiritual idiom of intshumayelo allows for spontaneity insofar as it relates to the divine and the material in a singular moment. At the heart of ukushumayela (to preach) are the remnants of ukubonga (oral praise poetry) which also relies on the divine and the material conditions of black life.
Bio: Athambile Masola is a writer, researcher and an award-winning poet based in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. She has a PhD from Rhodes University. Her debut collection of poetry is written in isiXhosa, Ilifa (Uhlanga Press, 2021). She is the co-author of the children’s history book series, Imbokodo: Women who shape us (Jacana Media, 2022) and Together Apart: The story of living in Apartheid (Jacana, 2025) with Dr Xolisa Guzula. In collaboration with Makhosazana Xaba she was involved in collating a collection of Noni Jabavu’s columns from 1977, A stranger at Home (Tafelberg, 2023). She is the co-editor of Inyathi Ibuzwa Kwabaphambili: Theorising South African Women’s Intellectual Legacies (Mandela Press, 2025) together with Babalwa Magoqwana and Siphokazi Magadla. Her research focuses on literary and intellectual histories of black women. She is also interested in the African language newspaper archive of the 19th and early 20th century.