|
Dr. Gary Baines
Room 3A16
+31 (0)71 5273374
g.baines@ru.ac.za
Gary Baines is an Associate Professor of History at Rhodes University,
Grahamstown, South Africa. His PhD on the history of the New Brighton
township in Port Elizabeth spawned numerous articles and a monograph
published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2003.
His areas of research subsequently expanded to include South African
culture, especially film, literature and music. He then ventured into the
fields of public history, memory studies, and the apocalyptic imagination.
He has contributed chapters to books published by, amongst others, Berghahn,
Blackwell, Ashgate, Equinox, the Nordic Africa Institute, Peter Lang and
Witwatersrand University Press.
Gary is currently engaged in a project on the afterlife or legacy of the
‘Border War’, especially for the young white males conscripted by the South
African Defence Force (SADF) to fight for the apartheid state. He envisages
completing a manuscript with the (provisional) title ‘Representing and
Remembering the Border War’ over the next two or three years. A by-product
of this research has been a growing interest in trauma studies and
victimology. In pursuit of this (and with the support of a colleague in the
Psychology Department), he is overseeing a South African Netherlands
Research Programme on Alternatives in Development ( SANPAD) funded project
that is entitled ‘Narrating Psychosocial Stress and Resilience of South
African Apartheid-Era Veterans’. As the name suggests, it involves
collecting and analyzing the stories of ex-combatants from the ranks of the
statutory forces and the liberation movements. A PhD and a MA student are
researching topics that fit within the overall parameters of the project.
His work at the ASC falls under the theme ‘Connections and Transformations’.
It will examine the ways in which SADF veterans have formed virtual
communities in cyberspace and managed to preserve their camaraderie and
refashion their militarized identities. It will attempt a discursive
analysis of websites hosted by these veterans.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Printable version