University of Malawi Associate Professor in the Department of Literary Studies, Asante Mtenje, is working on a project on the politics of dress, gender and sexuality in Malawian popular art which she hopes will cultimate in a book.
The project is part of her mission, having been awarded the Iso Lomso Fellowship at Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (Stias) in South Africa in 2022.
She said as a Malawian scholar interested in gender studies, she has often been intrigued by how female dress and women’s sartorial agency remain a highly contested issue among Malawians even after the advent of democracy in 1994 when freedom of dressing was incorporated in the Malawian constitution.
“In this project, I am therefore interested in dress as a site for examining questions of gender, sexuality, class and national belonging,” she said.
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On Iso Lomso Fellowship, Mtenje said Iso Lomso, which means ‘eye of tomorrow’ in Xhosa, is a fellowship which provides a three-year attachment to Stias to enable fellows to develop and conduct a long term research programme of their preference.
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She said a fellow is supposed to spend a total of 10 months in residency within the three-year attachment.
“I am doing my first residency which will be for three months and I will be at Stias until October this year,” Mtenje said.
The development also comes barely a week after another Associate Professor Wesley Macheso left the country over the weekend to participate in the 2023 International Writing Programme (IWP) Fall Residency, which started on August 19 and ends on November 4 at the University of Iowa in United States of America.
In another development, fourth-year Bachelor of Arts (Humanities) student Viveck Chimwaza recently emerged winner of the 2023 Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Tertiary Institution Essay Competition.
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Chimwaza was announced winner during the official ceremony of the 43rd Summit of Sadc Heads and Government held in Luanda, Angola.
The competition was announced in November 2022 and called upon students from tertiary institutions to submit essays.
As the winner, Chimwaza received $ 2,000.
