Casey Golomski

This workshop engages the life of Regina Gelana Twala—a Black South African literary figure and one of the first Black African women to earn a degree in anthropology—and her recently rediscovered and sole-surviving ethnography. Twala’s manuscript is based on her research in Eswatini (then Swaziland) in the 1950-1960s nearing Independence from Great Britain and amid ongoing apartheid in neighboring South Africa. Written for a general audience, it combines subjective perspectives, etic and linguistic analyses, and quasi-fictional depictions of Swati women’s everyday lives in a “modernizing” society. Twala died in 1968 and was effectively by erased from historical memory and anthropological canon, not unlike other Black women scholars. The workshop in Eswatini aims to resurrect Twala’s place in the history of anthropology and eventually produce a critical first edition of her book. It includes site visits to locations she visited, lived at, or wrote about. Six workshop participants—Black Swati women anthropologists and scholars will present on their research and how it relates to Twala’s legacy. In addition, a production team will generate digital audio-visual content during the workshop to produce a documentary-style podcast series to promote Twala’s significance to anthropology.