WINTER SCHOOL

The Winter School is committed to creating a space for discussion, presentation and response to questions around the humanities, the philosophy of history and the challenges of critical theory. It is also committed to a sustained critical engagement with texts, theory and concepts; to exploring genealogies of thinking and critique; to the consideration of how individual work relates to these concepts and arguments; and to how a/the text reveals itself to individual participants (how it relates to their work). Although sensitive to the possibilities of the present conjuncture of the postapartheid, the Winter School remains committed to think[ing] beyond the geohistorical frameworks of the South African particular.

Related News


Winter School 2023: Heidi Grunebaum, ‘Opening Address’

The CHR hosted its annual Winter School in August at the Greatmore Humanities Hub in Woodstock, Cape Town.

CHR Winter School, 2023: ‘The After’.

The CHR hosted its annual Winter School in August at the Greatmore Humanities Hub in Woodstock, Cape Town.

CHR Winter School, 2022: On the question of the minor
A reading by Emma Minkley and Kiasha Naidoo

The CHR hosted its annual Winter School from 17 to 20 October 2022 at the District Six Homecoming Centre in Cape Town.

Ireland, England, and the paradox of ‘minor literature’

The CHR will be hosting a public lecture by Professor Eve Patten on Wednesday, 26 October at the District Six Homecoming Centre.

No Partial Public Sympathies: A Categorial Imperative Unlike Any Other

The CHR will be hosting a public lecture by Professor Grovogui on Monday, 24 October at the District Six Homecoming Centre.

Winter School 2021: Fragment and Form

CHR Winter School 2021 on the theme of Fragment and Form was a hybrid event, hosted online and in-person at the Retreat at the Boschendal Estate in Franschhoek.

Radical Disenchantment

A CHR Webinar held jointly between Winter School and the Other Universals Consortium with Fadi Bardawil

Leaving Zion

A Winter School webinar with Associate Professor Heidi Grunebaum

Publics and Policing: Spies, Surveillance, and Colonial Subjects in Anti-Colonial French Politics

A Winter School webinar with Associate Professor Nancy Luxon

The Black Aquatic: On Water, Art and Black Movement

A Winter School webinar with Professor Rinaldo Walcott

WINTER SCHOOL 2020

Exodus, Movement, a/the People: Critical Thinking and the Collective

Winter School 2019: Dissensus

This year’s Winter School holds three distinct thematic inquiries.

Winter School 2018

The 2018 Winter School and Retreat held from 3 – 6 July 2018 will bring together questions of desire, technology, and practice under the title After Technology.

Past Events


Winter School Report 2017

About one hundred graduate students from a range of South African and international partner institutions participated in the Winter School Annual and the Consortium for Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI) annual meeting at the Castle of Good Hope from the 10th to the 12th August 2017.

Winter School 2017: The Humanities Improvised

Winter School  8th -13th August 2017: The Humanities Improvised The Flagship on Critical Thought in African Humanities of the Centre for Humanities Research at the […]

Winter School 2016: What is the University for?

The Flagship on Critical Thought in African Humanities of the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in collaboration with the […]

Winter School 2013: Acts to Ground: On the Politics of the Humanities

2013 Winter School: Acts to Ground: On the Politics of the Humanities Laborie, Paarl, Western Cape, 1-19 July 2013 (retreat 8-12 July) Convenors: CHR, UWC; […]

2014 Winter School: Race for the Humanities

Laborie, Paarl, Western Cape, July 7-11, 2014 Convenors: CHR, UWC; SARChI Chair in Social Change, University of Fort Hare; Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global […]