The 2006 Gwendolen M. Carter Lectures on Africa
March 5 - 7, 2006
Law, Politics, Culture and Society in South Africa:
The Politics of Inequality Then and Now
Gwendolen M. Carter was a towering figure in African Studies who more than any other scholar of her era made African concerns a major part of the international as well as the American scholarly and intellectual landscapes. The Center for African Studies thus honored her association with us in the 1980s by launching an annual lectures series or conference named in her honor. She presented the first set of lectures in the series in 1985, which were published under the title of Continuity and Change in Southern Africa.
Gwen was born in 1906; 2006 will be the centennial of her birth. Thus it is particularly appropriate to celebrate her life and work through a retrospective and contemporary examination of her scholarly influence on African Studies. Since the focus of her work was South Africa, especially with her pioneering 1958 book The Politics of Inequality: South Africa since 1948, the 2006 Carter Conference topic will be A Law, Politics, Culture and Society in South Africa: The Politics of Inequality Then and Now.
The 2006 Carter Conference also marks a new departure in that for the first time the Center will jointly sponsor the conference with an African University, the University of Cape Town, where the Centre for African Studies and the Faculty of Law will serve as the principal coordinating UCT units. There will be a second venue for the conference at UCT in July 2006.
