Join us for a launch and celebration of Jordache A. Ellapen's (newly appointed Associate Professor of Black Studies) new book, Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Queer Limits of South African Blackness (Duke University Press, 2025). Hosted by the Frederick Douglass Institute and Department of Black Studies, Professor Ellapen will be in dialogue with Professor Matthew Omelsky (Associate Professor of Black Studies and English) and Professor Pamila Gupta (Research Professor, University of the Free State, South Africa). Indenture Aesthetics is the first book length study to examine South African Blackness and Afro-Indian intimacies through a Queer Studies framework. The book analyses the visual culture and performance art practices of Black and Afro-Indian women and LGBTIQ+ artists and positions the aesthetic as pivotal to the ongoing pursuit of Black freedom in Southern Africa.