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Visiting Fellow, 2023 – 2024

Stacy Hardy

Lecturer in Creative Writing Rhodes University

Biography

Stacy Hardy is a writer, researcher, and editor whose work explores the intersections of embodiment, the individual, and society. Her writing has appeared in various anthologies and journals including the New Orleans Review, New Contrasts, The Evergreen Review, Black Sun Lit, and many more. She is the author of the short fiction collection Because the Night (Pocko, 2015) and An Archaeology of Holes (Rot-Bo-Krik, 2022), an English translation of which is forthcoming from Bridge Books. Her plays and librettos have been performed globally. Hardy is also a lecturer in creative writing; an editor at the Pan-African platform Chimurenga; a partner in the African creative writing teaching initiative Saseni; and a founder of Ukuthula, a project that develops new writing from and against gender-based violence. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Neubauer Collegium at the University of Chicago, where she is collaborating with anthropologist Kaushik Sunder Rajan, poet Daniel Borzutzky, and musician Neo Muyanga to build “breathing machines,” new multi- and interdisciplinary forms and forums for the expression of collectivity through the act of conspiring together. Hardy previously served as a Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow while collaborating on the Pulmonographies project (2020–2023). During her current residency (2023–2024), she is conducting research for the Transperformations project.

Featured Project

Illustration courtesy Stacy Hardy

Transperformations: Breathing Machines Across the Worlds

Project Topics:

2023 – 2024

Projects

Pulmonographies

Illustration by Graeme Arendse

Pulmonographies

An innovative series of "performance lectures" combining creative expression and theoretical inquiry offer new ways to study colonial and postcolonial histories of tuberculosis.

This research project will explore biographies and geographies of breath through a focus on the colonial histories and postcolonial politics surrounding tuberculosis in South Africa. It will be a research- and performance-based collaborative endeavor between anthropologist Kaushik Sunder Rajan...