ELL3009S.1 TWO CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETS: WILBUR AND NEMEROV
Lecturer: Rodney Edgecombe
A thematic and structural study of two "academic" poets
Prescribed texts:
Complete editions of Richard Wilbur and Howard Nemerov are on short loan. Students can assemble their own anthologies after receiving a list of set poems at the first tutorial.
If you cannot afford the collected works of each poet, please compile your own collections of Xeroxed lyrics. We shall work through as many of the poems listed below as we can comfortably cover. Be sure to acquire copies of each and every one, and please read them all (at least once) before the relevant class.
Richard Wilbur
The page references below derive from Richard Wilbur, New and Collected Poems (London: Faber, 1989)
‘Grace” (384); ‘The Beautiful Changes’ (392); ‘Caserta Garden’ (389); ‘He Was’ (332); ‘Ceremony’ (334); ‘From the Lookout Rock’ (327); A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra’ (271); ‘Advice to a Prophet’ (182); ‘In the Field’ (131); ‘Objects’ (360)
The page references below derive from Howard Nemerov, Collected Poems (Chicago: Univ.of Chicago Press, 1977):
‘Lives of Gulls and children’ (79); ‘Midsummer’s Day’ (94); ‘The Pond’ (98); ‘The Salt Garden’ (112)
Assessment: Two class essays
ELL3009S.2 PATRICK WHITE
Lecturer: Rodney Edgecombe
This seminar will centre on a detailed structural and stylistic analysis of three novels by Patrick White, the Australian author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973.
Prescribed texts:
Any editions of the following three titles will be acceptable:
White, Patrick. The Solid Mandala
______. The Vivisector
______. The Eye of the Storm
Assessment: Two essays, equally weighted, on two of the texts.
ELL3009S.3 CONTEMPORARY (POST-LIBERATION) SA POETRY
Lecturer: Kelwyn Sole
Seminar Outline:
This seminar will examine the major themes and poets of the years after 1990, in an attempt to gain a more adequate overview of the issues surrounding South African poetry since liberation. Prevalent themes such as identity (especially as regards gender and race), the ‘everyday’, memory and reconciliation, and political praise and disillusionment will be examined, as well as the issue of language and the interface between ‘published’ and ‘spoken-word’ poetry.
This course will crucially debate aesthetics and evaluative criteria and influences in literature. The influence of metropolitan poetry movements such as imagism, surrealism, ‘leaping poetry’ and a postmodern ‘poetry of witness’ on contemporary South African poetry will be highlighted, as well as the influence of African models such as praise poetry and the poetry of Black Consciousness. This will lead into a discussion of how to place South African utterances in the paradigms of modernism and/or post-modernism.
Among the poets discussed in class will be Karen Press, Seitlhamo Motsapi, Lesego Rampolokeng, Joan Metelerkamp, Ari Sitas, Tatamkhulu Africa, Ingrid de Kok and others. In addition, students will be required to complete a project wherein they have free choice to examine poets/poems of their own choosing.
Required reading:
There are no necessary book purchases for this course, as readings will be made available. However, it is a good idea to page through one or the other book anthologies that deal with post-1990 South African poetry before the course starts. Students eager to grapple with aesthetic issues could begin to look at some of the criticism appearing in the metropole at the moment which argues the relative worth of ‘postcolonial’ vs. ‘world’ vs. ‘transnational’ literature as categories and descriptors. I found Ramazani’s recent A Transnational Poetics especially illuminating.
ELL3009S.4 WILD RECKONING: WRITING NATURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Lecturer: Hedley Twidle
Seminar Outline:
‘Nature’, as Raymond Williams remarked, is perhaps the most complex word in the English language. In this seminar we will read a wide range of texts – poetry, novels, wilderness diaries, life-writing, environmental activism, ecocritical theory – as a means of thinking through the many ways in which ‘the natural’ is imagined and celebrated, constructed and consumed in modern culture. In a place known for game parks and nature documentaries, we will consider how ideas of the pastoral, of conservation, wilderness and the indigenous are changed and challenged in a postcolonial context. From within an emerging literature on the environmental humanities, we will be asking questions like: how does the ‘story of an African farm’ play out in the 21st century? What kind of narrative structures and metaphors are embedded in contemporary environmentalism? How can we read those debates about ‘natives’ versus ‘exotics’ that play out on the slopes around us? What effects does environmental crisis have on the forms and possibilities of the contemporary novel? How do writers give shape to the ‘slow violence’ of ecological degradation in a high-velocity digital world? And what does our particular locale allow us to see, or say, about the uneasy relation between natural and social histories?
Prescribed texts:
(Table Mountain / Hoerikwaggo (circa 540 million years B.P.)
T. C. Boyle, A Friend of the Earth (2000).
Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980). Try to buy the 2002 Bloomsbury edition with an introduction by Will Self.
Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist (1974).
Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985).
Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide (2005).
Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals (2009).
Karen Jayes, For the Mercy of Water (2013).
You will need to buy and read at least five of the above, and ideally all of them.
We will also be drawing on the following works of environmental activism:
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)
Ken Saro-Wiwa, A Month and a Day (1996).
Arundhati Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002).
Wangari Maathai, Unbowed: A Memoir (2006).
* Extracts from these works will be provided in a course reader along with selections from Edward Abbey, Jonathan Bate, John Berger, J. M. Coetzee, William Cronon, Barbara Kingsolver, Bill McKibben, Njabulo Ndebele, Rob Nixon, Gary Snyder and various poets from South Africa.
ELL3009S.5 QUEER THEORY AND CONTEMPORARY WRITING
Lecturer: Derrrick Higginbotham
Seminar Outline:
What can queer theory teach us about the interpretation of contemporary literature and art? To answer this question, we will study a variety of theoretical texts in conjunction with selected examples of contemporary writing and visual art produced in South Africa. We specifically will consider a series of essays that exemplify key trends in queer theory, including influential work by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, JJ Halberstam, Graeme Reid, Brenna Munro, and others. We will use these theoretical models to analyze autobiographical essays by Simon Nkoli and Zackie Ahmet, Nadine Gordimer’s None to Accompany Me (1994), Ashraf Jamal’s Love Themes for the Wilderness (1996), K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2002) as well as photos by Zanele Muholi from her project documenting black lesbians and transgender people in South Africa. This class will stress the politics of representation and narration, with particular attention to how sexuality intersects with class, gender, race, and nation. We also will concentrate on the kinds of stories that are told about sexuality and how different genres such as the novel, essay, theory, and photography frame sexuality in everyday, academic, and activist contexts.
We will have at least one special guest in the class: while visiting the University of Cape Town this August, JJ Halberstam will hold a workshop for us.
Prescribed texts:
Nadine Gordimer, None to Accompany Me, ISBN 13: 9781250007711
Ashraf Jamal, Love Themes for the Wilderness, ISBN 13: 9780795700392
K. Sello Duiker, The Quiet Violence of Dreams, ISBN 13: 9780795701207
All the essays will be compiled in a Course Reader provided on the first day of classes.
Assessment:
Attendance/Participation 10%
Response Papers (5% each) 10%
Essay 1 (2000 words) 30%
Annotated Bibliography as preparation for Essay 2 10%
ELL3009S.6 A CITY IN TRANSITION: READING POST-APARTHEID/POSTCOLONIAL JOHANNESBURG
Lecturer:Kudzayi Ngara
Seminar Outline:
In light of the preeminence of his writings on Johannesburg in the way in which South African urbanity is conceived and considered in literary and cultural discourse, this seminar will seek to evaluate the extent to which the “model” Vladislavić has constructed for the reading of Johannesburg is applicable to the work of other writers. Underlining the notion of post-apartheid/postcolonialism as being a “work in progress” we will problematise the issue of representation of the postcolonial city through different aspects like the negotiation and appropriation of space; urbanity and migration; identity formation and performance; as well as notions of the self. This will help us locate each of the texts under consideration at a particular locus in the representational continuum of the continually transforming city of Johannesburg.
Prescribed texts:
The Restless Supermarket – Ivan Vladislavic
The Exploded View – Ivan Vladislavic
Portrait with Keys – Ivan Vladislavic
Welcome to Our Hillbrow – Phaswana Mpe
Room 207 – Kgebetli Moele
Zoo City – Lauren Beukes
Assessment:
Essay 1 (3000 words): 40%
Essay 2 (3000 words): 40%
Attendance/Participation: 20%
ELL3009S.7 DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: SPEAKING COMPLEXITY
Lecturer: Daniela Joffe
Seminar Outline:
“What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.”
– DFW, Oblivion
“We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple. But—”
– DFW, interview
The human interior is so complex as to be unspeakable. Unspeakable complexity is lonely. Serious fiction must attempt to “speak” complexity, to redeem loneliness. It might just be that simple. But—
In this seminar, we will explore the ways in which the late David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) made complexity both the subject and the technique of his writing, adding a “but” to every simplification. We will see how Wallace’s work amplifies, rather than silences, the polyphony of language and of thought—in an attempt to create a more authentic literature that might speak to and redeem a world of complex, lonely selves.
Perhaps most importantly we will learn to practise the same cultivation of complexity that Wallace himself embodied. We will try to become readers and critics that do not smother the ambiguity of the authors and texts we encounter but instead seek to sustain it.
Novels:
Infinite Jest (selected excerpts)
Pale King (selected excerpts)
Essays:
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (selected essays)
Consider the Lobster (selected essays)
Short Stories:
Oblivion (selected short stories)
Girl with the Curious Hair (selected short stories)
Interviews:
In addition to the texts above, we will also watch, listen and read a variety of Wallace’s interviews for television, radio and print.
Assessment:
Essay 1: 40%
Essay 2: 40%
Participation: 20%
ELL3009S.8 MADNESS AND LITERATURE
Lecturer:Penny Busetto
Seminar Outline:
What is madness? Is it an illness to be cured, or is it divine creativity? Is it the opposite of reason or is it reason itself taken to its extreme? Is it the swirling chaos of the Id, the unconscious, which, if made conscious, will disappear and lose its power? What part do culture and history play in it? Do we really know what talking about madness means, and can we even ask this question logically? Can logic ever comprehend madness? This paradox goes to the root of Western thought and has engaged scholars over the centuries. Only through literature has madness been able to speak for itself, or at least with some freedom. In this seminar series we will examine the intersection of several ongoing debates, in philosophy, psychoanalysis and psychiatry, to try and come to some understanding of the place of literature in these debates. Our focus will be on contemporary South African fiction. The point will be less to find an answer than to undertake an analysis – and a problematisation – of the question.
The course will be based on selected readings from the following authors:
Shoshana Felman, Michel Foucault, Franz Fanon, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, CG Jung, Wilfred Bion, Michael Eigen, Donald Winnicott, Jacques Lacan, Julian Leff, Sally Swartz, the DSM 5.
And the following literary texts:
Zakes Mda – Heart of Redness
Shawn Johnson – The Native Commissioner
Bessie Head – A Question of Power
J.M. Coetzee – The Heart of the Country
Henk van Woerden – A Mouthful of Glass
Antjie Krog – Country of My Skull
Assessment: Two class essays.
ELL3009S.9 THE “NEW” DIASPORA IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN FICTION
Lecturer: Christopher Ouma
Seminar Outline:
The emergence of new writing from the postcolonial African diaspora has led to a re-configuration and re-examination of generations of African literature, as well as ways in which this “new Diaspora” is beginning to re-engage with recent waves of migration and displacement. This new writing allows us to begin to trace genealogies of African writing, while trying to evaluate what exactly defines this potentially new zeitgeist. One of the ways in which this writing defines itself is by engaging with a residual post-colonial experience through a post-modern consciousness – one which arguably constructs its own aesthetics of displacement and migration. The seminar will position us at the pulse of contemporary constructions of postcolonial African identities, while additionally allowing us a window into the evolutionary directions of African literature at the moment.
Primary Texts:
The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Virgin of Flames – Chris Abani
One Day I will Write about this Place – Binyavanga Wainaina
A Life Elsewhere – Segun Afolabi
The Icarus Girl – Helen Oyeyemi
Assessment/Evaluation
Evaluation for this course will take the format of two sit-in tests (weighted at 25% each) and an essay (weighted at 50%)
ELL3009S.10 'AN ISLAND IS A WORLD': CARIBBEAN WRITING, DECOLONIZATION AND THE POSTCOLONY
Lecturer: Victoria Collis-Buthelezi
Seminar Outline:
The emergence of new writing from the postcolonial African diaspora has led to a re-configuration and re-examination of generations of African literature, as well as ways in which this “new Diaspora” is beginning to re-engage with recent waves of migration and displacement. This new writing allows us to begin to trace genealogies of African writing, while trying to evaluate what exactly defines this potentially new zeitgeist. One of the ways in which this writing defines itself is by engaging with a residual post-colonial experience through a post-modern consciousness – one which arguably constructs its own aesthetics of displacement and migration. The seminar will position us at the pulse of contemporary constructions of postcolonial African identities, while additionally allowing us a window into the evolutionary directions of African literature at the moment.
Book List:
Rene Maran, Batouala (1921)
Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark (1934)
Aimé Cesaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1939)
Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World (1949)
Sam Selvon, An Island is a World (1955)
Peter Abrahams, This Island Now (1966)
Derek Walcott, Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967)
V.S. Naipaul, Guerillas (1975)
Film(s) to be Screened:
Robert Parrish, Fire Down Below (1957)
Hugh A. Robertson, Bim (1974)
Stephanie Black, Life and Debt (2001)
Assessment:
In-class presentation and class participation (20%)
Weekly reader's responses (30%)
Final research paper (50%)
ELL3009S.11 SUBJECTS AT SEA: SAILORS AND SURFERS
Lecturer: Meg Samuelson
Seminar Outline:
IWe will begin with short fiction by Melville and Conrad that is written in, or in the wake of, the ‘age of sail’ and which will establish two central threads running through this elective: the ontological instability and crisis of reading inaugurated by being ‘at sea’; and, bildung and the development of the (masculine) subject in negotiation with the natural force of the sea. Thereafter, we will read Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, which brings together on board a ship traversing the “alchemy of the open water” lascars, freedmen, sailors, indentured labourers, prisoners and cross-dressing or caste-crossing women. Having voyaged across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, we turn in the second half of the course to the coasts of California, South Australia and Durban as we study novels and films that engage surf practice and culture to stage narratives of becoming and constructions and performances of (non)normative masculinities, and which contribute to the elaboration of “surf noir”. Throughout, we will attend to various oppositions that are stabilized or churned up in the sea, including labour and leisure, surface and underneath, vulnerability and invulnerability, nature and culture, masculinity and femininity, youth and maturity.
Prescribed texts:
Short fiction by Herman Charles Melville and Joseph Conrad (to be provided)
Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies (2008)
Kem Nunn, Tapping the Source (1984)
Tim Winton, Breath (2008)
Films(to be screened):
Big Wednesday (dir. John Milius; screenplay John Milius & Dennis Aaberg, 1978)
Otelo Burning (dir. Sarah Blecher; screenplay James Whyle, Sara Blecker, Cast Workshop, 2012)
Assessment: class presentation: 10%; written exercises: 30%; final essay (3,000 words): 60%.
ELL3009S.12 NEOLIBERALISM AND THE CONQUEST OF COOL
Lecturer: Eric Strand
Seminar Outline:
The United States owes many of its noblest political movements, such as environmentalism and feminism, to the social energy of the 1960s. At the same time, much of this rebellious energy was easily incorporated by multinational business, in a project of branding that made the counterculture everyone’s culture. Through a detailed analysis of contemporary literature and selected films, we will explore the darker side of the counterculture’s divided legacy. In particular, our readings will focus on the argument that as the counterculture evolved, it developed an “antistatist,” or “antigovernmental” ideology that actually lead to depoliticization instead of greater political awareness. Although it may have had good intentions, this antistatist ideology inadvertently prepared the way for the emergence of neoliberalism, a right-wing political movement that attacked “big government” and social welfare programs in the name of free-market economics.
In addition to introducing you to the Beats, the counterculture, and the postmodern novel, this class will immerse you in some of America’s present-day debates. To a large degree, America’s cultural and political landscape is still shaped by the aftermath of the Sixties.
Prescribed texts:
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Bret Easton Ellis, Less than Zero
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
Course Reader: Thomas Frank, “Why Johnny Can’t Dissent”; Joan Didion, essays from Slouching Towards Bethlehem; Pico Iyer, essays from Video Night in Kathmandu
Films:
Rebel Without a Cause, dir. Nicholas Ray
Easy Rider, dir. Dennis Hopper
Star Wars, dir. George Lucas
Forrest Gump, dir. Robert Zemeckis
Assessment:
Essay 1 (5 pages): 40%
Essay 2 (5 pages): 40%
Attendance/Participation: 20%