Nettleford: Rhodes scholarships is "retribution". - RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
THE INAUGURAL Rex Nettleford Prize in Cultural Studies was awarded on Friday to Dr. Sonjah Stanley-Niaah of the Cultural Studies Department of the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI).
The fellowship, which will last one year, is tenable at UWI and values 10,000 pounds sterling with a 2,000 pounds sterling travel allowance. It will fund Dr. Stanley-Niaah's research into the respective roots and comparisons between Jamaican dancehall and South African kwaito music.
She said that her fellowship, which begins this summer, would culminate in the publication, in book form, of her research.
FORMED LAST YEAR
The announcement of the fellowship for Dr. Stanley-Niaah took place at the Mona Visitors' Lodge.
The fellowship was formed last year, in honour of former Rhodes Scholar and UWI Vice Chancellor, Professor Rex Nettleford, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Rhodes Scholarship. On that occasion the Rhodes Trust combined with former South African President Nelson Mandela, to form the Rhodes Mandela Foundation to support educational and cultural projects in South Africa.
Funded by the Rhodes Trust, the award functions, as Prof. Nettleford put it, to provide "retribution", to return to Africa some of the wealth taken from the continent by colonialists such as Cecil John Rhodes who founded the Rhodes Scholarship (tenable at Oxford university). Prof. Nettleford was one of four academics awarded honorary doctorates by Oxford University honouring former Rhodes scholars.
