This research project collaboratively investigates how women in Khayelitsha, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town, are using hip-hop to address issues of racism, sexism, economic oppression and the lasting effects of colonialism and apartheid. Since 2015 the activist hip-hop crew, Soundz of the South, have hosted a regular event called Rebel Sistah Cypher as a space for female hip-hop artists and poets to 'perform critique' and address pressing social issues faced by their communities. 

Dr Sudiipta Dowsett is an anthropologist with a research focus on the transformative effects of embodied collective performance practices. She is interested in the decolonial and revitalisation capacities of hip-hop cultures in South Africa and Australia.  Her work explores how artists utilise hip-hop to make sense of complex neo-colonial contexts, and to revitalise language and culture, embodying and embedding ancestral art forms within the contemporary global performance culture of hip-hop, remixing, asserting and claiming their place in the world.

This seminar is sponsored by The Freilich Project and takes place within the School of Archaeology and Anthropology seminar series. 

Zoom Details:
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Meeting ID: 812 1179 0732
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