The Redistributed University: Lecture by Sarah Nuttall

Sarah NuttallUniversity of the Witwatersrand, JohannasburgAs we enter our tenth month of the global COVID-19 pandemic, universities have been forced to reimagine their role, mission, and functions in unexpected ways. Some of their staff have been redefined as “essential workers,” while others have moved online, taking flight from their physical locations.  At the same time, generational struggles triggered for the most part before the pandemic are far from resolved. Concerns about  equality of access, social justice, curriculum reform, and the transformation of sites of higher learning firmly remain on the agenda. This presentation will focus on what Nuttall calls "the redistributed university."

In this lecture, she will examine the ways in which the "redistributed university" has found expression in the context of the pandemic, to the extent of  potentially reconfiguring not only the form and content of the "old university," but also the relationship between knowledge, critique, and institution. Using a deliberately speculative, literary, and dialogic form while drawing from her Africa-based, global South institutional location, she will grapple with these and other questions, including emerging forms of the public humanities in an international knowledge commons fast redefining itself.