Transition Magazine: Nelson Mandela

featuring

WARREN BINFORD
XOLELA MANGCU
STEVEN NELSON

Date

Dec

Tuesday
December 2, 2014
8:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store is pleased to once again host an evening with Transition Magazine for the launch of Issue #116, a tribute to Nelson Mandela.

In December, we mark a year since the passing of Nelson Mandela—a man who was as much myth as flesh and blood. With issue 116, we pay tribute to Mandela’s worldly attainments and to his otherworldly sainthood. Our event will feature readings from three of the issue’s contributors. XOLELA MANGCU, one of Mandela’s most vocal South African critics, asks what it would look like to infuse Mandela’s anti-racial politics with a politics of racial justice and black power. Art historian STEVEN NELSON addresses the ubiquity of images of Nelson Mandela, suggesting that these pictures allow the viewer to share in the hope and reconciliation for which Mandela has come to stand, even as they risk obscuring our view of the real Mandela. Law professor WARREN BINFORD examines post-colonial Africa’s pursuit of stringent laws protecting the rights of children, while reflecting upon the ideal of unity amidst enduring post-apartheid inequality.

Copies of this collectible issue of Transition will be on hand to purchase at a special one-night-only promotional price, with contributions from Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Pierre de Vos, and many more.

Steven Nelson

Steven Nelson is Associate Professor of African and African American art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of the award-winning From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture in and out of Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2007). His writings have appeared in numerous venues. Nelson is currently pursuing projects on urbanism in Dakar, Senegal; the Underground Railroad; and the use of geography in contemporary African and African American art.

Warren Binford

Warren Binford is a law professor and director of the clinical law program at Willamette University where she teaches international children’s rights and the child and family advocacy clinic. In 2012, she received a Fulbright Scholar Award to conduct research on the advancement of children’s rights in Africa and co-teach “Children’s Rights in the African Context” at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. While conducting her research, she discovered the pivotal role that Nelson Mandela had in advancing children’s rights and considers this one of his greatest legacies. Professor Binford holds a B.A., summa cum laude with distinction, and an Ed.M. from Boston University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Xolela Mangcu

Xolela Mangcu is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town, and the Oppenheimer Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the author and co-author of eight books, including The Arrogance of Power: South Africa’s Leadership Meltdown ( Tafelberg Press, 2014) and Biko: A Life ( London and New York: IB Tauris, 2013), To the Brink: The State of Democracy in South Africa (UKZN Press 2008), The Meaning of Mandela (essays by Wole Soyinka, Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr.), (HSRC Press, 2005). Mangcu has been a regular columnist for Business Day, The Weekender and The Sunday Independent, and currently writes a bi-weekly column for Sowetan. He was also the Founder of the Platform for Public Deliberation and Founding Executive Director of the Steve Biko Foundation.

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

Event Series: Transition Magazine

Born in Africa and bred in the diaspora, Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling, most curious ideas about race. Since its founding in Uganda in 1961, the magazine has kept apace of the rapid transformation of the black world and has remained a leading forum of intellectual debate. Now, in an age that demands ceaseless improvisation, they aim to be both an anchor of deep reflection on black life and a map charting new routes through the globalized world.

Transition is a publication of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, published three times annually by Indiana University Press. Find Transition on Twitter at @Transition_Mag and on the web at http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/transition. Transition partners with Harvard Book Store several times a year for a discussion based on their latest issue.