Dissertation Defense of
Melissa J. Miller-Felton
VIOLENCE AS AN ECOLOGY: WOMEN MAKING SAFTEY IN KHAYELITSHA
October 17, 2025
9:15 am
Virginia Modeling Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC)
1030 University Blvd, Suffolk, VA 23435
Abstract:
This dissertation asks how women in Khayelitsha make safety in a place where danger has become ordinary and where the afterlives of colonialism and apartheid still determine who waits, who walks, and who arrives home. I call the framework that emerged an ecology of violenceslow, structural, colonial, and physical a way of seeing how harm gathers across generations and infrastructures, and how care, exhaustion, and survival intertwine within it. Safety is not delivered by the state; it is made daily. Women patrol, plan, bless, and coordinate. They measure danger in steps and minutes, turning maps into protection and testimony.
Using interviews, walk-alongs, and participatory visual methods grounded in decolonial, Black feminist, and Indigenous ethics, I trace how care becomes governance. Their quiet acts, checking doors, watching corners, walking one another home, exposing the scaffolding of neglect and a civic intelligence of care.
The work that continues is not to praise resilience of these women, but to end the conditions that require itto shorten exposure, to return time, and to insist that safety, like dignity, is a right that must arrive on time.
Committee:
Dr. Erika Frydenlund, Chair
Dr. Jennifer Fish
Dr. Shanaaz Hoosain
Dr. Peter Schulman
