Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 2016, Vol. 15(1) 107–121 ! The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1474022215613604 ahh.sagepub.com State of the Art The arts in contemporary South African higher education: Film and media studies Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa Abstract Twenty yearsafter South Africa’s first democratic elections, what is the state of film and media studies education at the country’s higher education institutions? The article examines several key debates, from calls for the decolonisation of curricula to the tension between internationalisation and local research in local media industries. Is film and media studies reiterating ‘the logic of the present system’, or does it offer new avenues for scholars to pursue progressive and decolonising projects in the South African university? Keywords Higher education, film studies, media studies, transformation, South Africa Introduction In late April 2015, Mbembe presented a seminar on Frantz Fanon at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The seminar was one of many lectures, panel discussions and readings organised by RhodesMustFall, a student-led movement that, as the symbolic starting point to decolonise the university, rallied around the call to have the statue of Cecil John Rhodes removed from its central position on the UCT campus. This decolonisation project echoed protests at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), and has ignited public debate throughout South Africa on the lack of transformation at higher education institutions in terms of the small number of senior black academics, alienating institutional cultures and unrepre- sentative university curricula. Corresponding author: Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk, Centrefor Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. Email: ian.rijsdijk@uct.ac.za by guest on January 22, 2016 ahh.sagepub.com Downloaded from