Desirée Lewis
Biographic Data
| ID | 3590850 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Desirée Lewis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Desirée |
| FAMILY NAME | Lewis |
| SIGNATURE | LEWIS D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Western Cape |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Re-reading Africa Through Food: Introduction
Thinking Through Food in South Africa: Identities, Embodiment and Representation
When we sit at individual or communal tables, we consider each other and our senses before taking a single bite. We think about what brought us to the table, who we are eating with, what meal will be served and possibly even where the food is from. South Africa is home to diverse cultures, histories, food heritages, culinary landscapes, food-growing and food-buying environments that collectively spice the food eaten and enjoyed by individuals and…
Transnational Perspectives on Food, Ecology and the Anthropocene
South African Food Studies: Introduction
Introducing a special issue of Matatu titled “South African Food Studies,” this essay argues for the importance of food as a lens for understanding contemporary culture and society. More specifically, the essay advocates for recentring Global South contexts—in this case South Africa—in a ‘food studies’ conversation that has often been dominated by the American academy; it also underscores the vitality of the humanities, qualitative social science…
Reading Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson: A Personal essay
This essay critically responds to recent calls to decolonise the classics. In rejecting claims about the inherent value of certain literary works, I unravel my socially situated reading and responses, and therefore counter assumptions that literary value or acts of reading can be universalised. I reflect on personal encounters with Jane Austen’s novels and Emily Dickinson’s poetry, demonstrating how this generated my cognitive, sensory and imagin…
Nativism: African Bodies and Photographic Performance
Although the focus of this chapter is a particular recent photographer, its broader concern is with how performative African identities have been and continue to be imagined as anatomically and culturally generalized bodies. Several writers have identified the simultaneous growth of photography, ethnography, and colonizing projects from the nineteenth century. The photographed subject was frozen as an object for others’ scrutiny, with photography…
Surfacing: On being black and feminist in South Africa
Governmentality and South Africa's Edifice of Gender and Sexual Rights
Leading feminist scholars and activists have critiqued the current impact of South Africa's provisions for gender equality and sexual rights. The country boasts one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, and its formal mechanisms for gender transformation and sexual citizenship are - at a global level - pathbreaking. At the same time, however, violence against women, gender non-conforming people and gays and lesbians or ongoing gende…
Bodies, matter and feminist freedoms: Revisiting the politics of food
Food items, eating practices and the various forms of work associated with food are not only shaped by social and cultural contexts and meanings, they are also generative, actively forging connections among social beings, linking bodies to organic matter and anchoring human beings in nature. Since food is often connected to gendered divisions of labour and feminised work, it creates a locus for work, creativity and pleasure that transcend realms …
Gender, feminism and food studies: A critical review
Policy research and scholarship on food has rapidly increased in recent decades. The attention to ‘gender' within this work appears to signal important practical and academic efforts to mainstream gendered understandings of food consumption, distribution and production into expansive conceptualisations of human security. This article argues that the gender-related work on food has wide-ranging and often troubling political and theoretical foundat…
Static: Race and representation in post-apartheid music, media and film
The scope of Adam Haupt's recent book is extraordinarily wide. Static explores contemporary music and film, technology such as YouTube and social media tools, the video made by the University of Free State students that made headlines in 2008, South Africa's hosting of the Soccer World Cup in 2010, and the controversy surrounding Brett Murray's The Spear. It also offers analysis and arguments that have already begun to resonate in discussions on …
Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment Autobiographical Reflections, Essays and Poems , edited by Carole Boyce Davies
Carole Boyce Davies’ most recent book, a collection of Claudia Jones’ autobiographical reflections, essays and poems, opens up a fascinating and extremely important view of a black woman intellectu
Gender, sexuality and commodity culture
In their discussion of the messianic promise and character of capitalism at the start of the new millennium, Jean and John Comaroff (2001) draw attention to the contradictory impulses of commodity
Sophia Klaaste: Self-Portraits
Scripted bodies: Introduction
Rethinking Nationalism in Relation to Foucault's History of Sexuality and Adrienne Rich's `Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence'
Theory and Intertextuality: Reading Zora Neale Hurston and Bessie Head
For Julia Kristeva,1 intertextuality is both the inevitable consequence of all literary and textual practices and a method for exploring the discursive contexts of these practices. Rather than read
African Gender Research and Postcoloniality: Legacies and Challenges
Much African gender research draws extensively on the discipline of anthropology, and the predominant emphasis in many gender initiatives on the continent remains technocratic and narrowly developmentalist. Alternatives to traditional anthropological and technicist methods and ideas have been developed by feminist scholars in a variety of fields. In historical research from the late 80s, for example, Fatima Mernissi (1988) and Bonlanle Awe (1991)…
Biography, Nationalism and Yvonne Vera'sNehanda
This paper shows how biographies of individuals and nations are interlinked. While this story-telling has generally been seen as pivotal to anti-colonial African nationalist struggles, it is also a vital feature of the present. Nation-building, policy-making and a range of internal struggles within the nation are conveyed through distinctive stories about individuals and groups. Many stories about individuals and collectivities can be described a…
Self-Representation and Reconstructions of Southern African Pasts: Bessie Head’s A Bewitched Crossroad
Gender Myths and Citizenship in Two Autobiographies by South African Women
Desiree Lewis, Ellen Kuzwayo, Mamphela Ramphele, Gender Myths and Citizenship in Two Autobiographies by South African Women, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, No. 40, Citizenship (1999), pp. 38-44
Voices from the Margins
Voices from the Margins
Debates around deconstruction and difference have influenced, interested, angered and confused feminists in recent years. Cheryl Hendricks and Desiree Lewis discuss trends in current feminist theory
Birth Control, Contraception and Women's Rights in SA: A Cape Town Case Study
Access to safe birth control methods and knowledge about their effectivity and disadvantages are basic prerequisites for the liberation of women. But the propagation of contraceptive services in South Africa has often adversely affected black women's health and has largely ignored their needs for education and personal choice. Focusing on interviews with a cross-section of the residents of Heideveld, a coloured township in Cape Town, this study i…
Feminisms in South Africa
Bodies, matter and feminist freedoms: Revisiting the politics of food
Food items, eating practices and the various forms of work associated with food are not only shaped by social and cultural contexts and meanings, they are also generative, actively forging connections among social beings, linking bodies to organic matter and anchoring human beings in nature. Since food is often connected to gendered divisions of labour and feminised work, it creates a locus for work, creativity and pleasure that transcend realms …
Voices from the Margins
Debates around deconstruction and difference have influenced, interested, angered and confused feminists in recent years. Cheryl Hendricks and Desiree Lewis discuss trends in current feminist theory
Gender, feminism and food studies: A critical review
Policy research and scholarship on food has rapidly increased in recent decades. The attention to ‘gender' within this work appears to signal important practical and academic efforts to mainstream gendered understandings of food consumption, distribution and production into expansive conceptualisations of human security. This article argues that the gender-related work on food has wide-ranging and often troubling political and theoretical foundat…
Feminisms in South Africa
Gender Myths and Citizenship in Two Autobiographies by South African Women
Desiree Lewis, Ellen Kuzwayo, Mamphela Ramphele, Gender Myths and Citizenship in Two Autobiographies by South African Women, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, No. 40, Citizenship (1999), pp. 38-44
Governmentality and South Africa's Edifice of Gender and Sexual Rights
Leading feminist scholars and activists have critiqued the current impact of South Africa's provisions for gender equality and sexual rights. The country boasts one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, and its formal mechanisms for gender transformation and sexual citizenship are - at a global level - pathbreaking. At the same time, however, violence against women, gender non-conforming people and gays and lesbians or ongoing gende…
Scripted bodies: Introduction
Theory and Intertextuality: Reading Zora Neale Hurston and Bessie Head
For Julia Kristeva,1 intertextuality is both the inevitable consequence of all literary and textual practices and a method for exploring the discursive contexts of these practices. Rather than read
Gender, sexuality and commodity culture
In their discussion of the messianic promise and character of capitalism at the start of the new millennium, Jean and John Comaroff (2001) draw attention to the contradictory impulses of commodity
Thinking Through Food in South Africa: Identities, Embodiment and Representation
When we sit at individual or communal tables, we consider each other and our senses before taking a single bite. We think about what brought us to the table, who we are eating with, what meal will be served and possibly even where the food is from. South Africa is home to diverse cultures, histories, food heritages, culinary landscapes, food-growing and food-buying environments that collectively spice the food eaten and enjoyed by individuals and…
Transnational Perspectives on Food, Ecology and the Anthropocene
South African Food Studies: Introduction
Introducing a special issue of Matatu titled “South African Food Studies,” this essay argues for the importance of food as a lens for understanding contemporary culture and society. More specifically, the essay advocates for recentring Global South contexts—in this case South Africa—in a ‘food studies’ conversation that has often been dominated by the American academy; it also underscores the vitality of the humanities, qualitative social science…
Birth Control, Contraception and Women's Rights in SA: A Cape Town Case Study
Access to safe birth control methods and knowledge about their effectivity and disadvantages are basic prerequisites for the liberation of women. But the propagation of contraceptive services in South Africa has often adversely affected black women's health and has largely ignored their needs for education and personal choice. Focusing on interviews with a cross-section of the residents of Heideveld, a coloured township in Cape Town, this study i…
The Life History of Raul Honwana: An inside view of Mozambique from colonialism to independence, 1905–1975
Journal Article The Life History of Raul Honwana: an inside view of Mozambique from colonialism to independence, 1905–1975 Get access The Life History of Raul Honwana: an inside view of Mozambique from colonialism to independence, 1905–1975, by Raul Honwana, edited by Allan F. Isaacman. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder & London, 1988. ix + 181 pp. £19.95 hardbook. ISBN 1 55587 114 3. DESIREE LEWIS DESIREE LEWIS University of York Search for othe…
Assimilation and authority in two Mozambican self‐narratives
Birth Control, Contraception and Women's Rights in SA: A Cape Town Case Study
Access to safe birth control methods and knowledge about their effectivity and disadvantages are basic prerequisites for the liberation of women. But the propagation of contraceptive services in South Africa has often adversely affected black women's health and has largely ignored their needs for education and personal choice. Focusing on interviews with a cross-section of the residents of Heideveld, a coloured township in Cape Town, this study i…
Feminisms in South Africa
Voices from the Margins
Voices from the Margins
Debates around deconstruction and difference have influenced, interested, angered and confused feminists in recent years. Cheryl Hendricks and Desiree Lewis discuss trends in current feminist theory
Gender Myths and Citizenship in Two Autobiographies by South African Women
Desiree Lewis, Ellen Kuzwayo, Mamphela Ramphele, Gender Myths and Citizenship in Two Autobiographies by South African Women, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, No. 40, Citizenship (1999), pp. 38-44
Self-Representation and Reconstructions of Southern African Pasts: Bessie Head’s A Bewitched Crossroad
Biography, Nationalism and Yvonne Vera'sNehanda
This paper shows how biographies of individuals and nations are interlinked. While this story-telling has generally been seen as pivotal to anti-colonial African nationalist struggles, it is also a vital feature of the present. Nation-building, policy-making and a range of internal struggles within the nation are conveyed through distinctive stories about individuals and groups. Many stories about individuals and collectivities can be described a…
African Gender Research and Postcoloniality: Legacies and Challenges
Much African gender research draws extensively on the discipline of anthropology, and the predominant emphasis in many gender initiatives on the continent remains technocratic and narrowly developmentalist. Alternatives to traditional anthropological and technicist methods and ideas have been developed by feminist scholars in a variety of fields. In historical research from the late 80s, for example, Fatima Mernissi (1988) and Bonlanle Awe (1991)…
Rethinking Nationalism in Relation to Foucault's History of Sexuality and Adrienne Rich's `Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence'
Theory and Intertextuality: Reading Zora Neale Hurston and Bessie Head
For Julia Kristeva,1 intertextuality is both the inevitable consequence of all literary and textual practices and a method for exploring the discursive contexts of these practices. Rather than read
Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment Autobiographical Reflections, Essays and Poems , edited by Carole Boyce Davies
Carole Boyce Davies’ most recent book, a collection of Claudia Jones’ autobiographical reflections, essays and poems, opens up a fascinating and extremely important view of a black woman intellectu
Gender, sexuality and commodity culture
In their discussion of the messianic promise and character of capitalism at the start of the new millennium, Jean and John Comaroff (2001) draw attention to the contradictory impulses of commodity
Sophia Klaaste: Self-Portraits
Scripted bodies: Introduction
Static: Race and representation in post-apartheid music, media and film
The scope of Adam Haupt's recent book is extraordinarily wide. Static explores contemporary music and film, technology such as YouTube and social media tools, the video made by the University of Free State students that made headlines in 2008, South Africa's hosting of the Soccer World Cup in 2010, and the controversy surrounding Brett Murray's The Spear. It also offers analysis and arguments that have already begun to resonate in discussions on …
Gender, feminism and food studies: A critical review
Policy research and scholarship on food has rapidly increased in recent decades. The attention to ‘gender' within this work appears to signal important practical and academic efforts to mainstream gendered understandings of food consumption, distribution and production into expansive conceptualisations of human security. This article argues that the gender-related work on food has wide-ranging and often troubling political and theoretical foundat…
Bodies, matter and feminist freedoms: Revisiting the politics of food
Food items, eating practices and the various forms of work associated with food are not only shaped by social and cultural contexts and meanings, they are also generative, actively forging connections among social beings, linking bodies to organic matter and anchoring human beings in nature. Since food is often connected to gendered divisions of labour and feminised work, it creates a locus for work, creativity and pleasure that transcend realms …
Nativism: African Bodies and Photographic Performance
Although the focus of this chapter is a particular recent photographer, its broader concern is with how performative African identities have been and continue to be imagined as anatomically and culturally generalized bodies. Several writers have identified the simultaneous growth of photography, ethnography, and colonizing projects from the nineteenth century. The photographed subject was frozen as an object for others’ scrutiny, with photography…
Surfacing: On being black and feminist in South Africa
Governmentality and South Africa's Edifice of Gender and Sexual Rights
Leading feminist scholars and activists have critiqued the current impact of South Africa's provisions for gender equality and sexual rights. The country boasts one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, and its formal mechanisms for gender transformation and sexual citizenship are - at a global level - pathbreaking. At the same time, however, violence against women, gender non-conforming people and gays and lesbians or ongoing gende…
Reading Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson: A Personal essay
This essay critically responds to recent calls to decolonise the classics. In rejecting claims about the inherent value of certain literary works, I unravel my socially situated reading and responses, and therefore counter assumptions that literary value or acts of reading can be universalised. I reflect on personal encounters with Jane Austen’s novels and Emily Dickinson’s poetry, demonstrating how this generated my cognitive, sensory and imagin…
Transnational Perspectives on Food, Ecology and the Anthropocene
South African Food Studies: Introduction
Introducing a special issue of Matatu titled “South African Food Studies,” this essay argues for the importance of food as a lens for understanding contemporary culture and society. More specifically, the essay advocates for recentring Global South contexts—in this case South Africa—in a ‘food studies’ conversation that has often been dominated by the American academy; it also underscores the vitality of the humanities, qualitative social science…
Sociology (20 works) · Political science (19 works) · Gender Studies (15 works) · Law (13 works) · History (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Art (10 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · African history and culture studies (6 works) · Law (6 works)