Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BBI-ANG17-218E/G1
- Title
- Reading Literary Texts 1.: Cities and Urban Spaces in South African Literature and Culture
- Usual semester
- Autumn
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- Learning outcomes
- The main aim of the course is to acquaint students with contemporary South African literature and other cultural production. The focus will be on urban spaces, which allows us to get a glimpse into current issues permeating South African society and culture. The course places emphasis on the apartheid and post-apartheid cityscape as it appears in literature, film and music.
- Course content
- Selected works of contemporary South African fiction and film as specified by the instructor (see: list of compulsory readings). The course will also spend time contextualizing the cultural background of the works, including social problems of the apartheid and post-apartheid eras, as well as those caused by the rapidity of the urbanization process. The theory and practice of postcolonial reading will also be briefly discussed.
- Assessment method
- Exam mark offered in advance based on in-class activity, a presentation, a home paper of cca. 5-6 pages and short (120-word) response papers about the compulsory readings.
- Bibliography
- Beukes, Lauren (2010). Zoo City. District 9 (2009). dir. Neill Blomkamp. (selected scenes) Mpe, Phaswane (2001). Welcome to Our Hillbrow. Noah, Trevor (2016). Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. (selected chapters) Soweto Inside Out: Stories About Africa’s Famous Township (2004). Eds. Adam Roberts & Joe Thloloe (selected short stories) Tsotsi (2005). dir. Gavin Hood. Van Niekerk, Marlene (1994). Triomf. (selected chapters)
- Recommended bibliography
- Clarkson, Carrol. “Locating Identity in Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow.” Third World Quarterly 26.3 (2005): 451-459. Crous, Marius.“”Like the Skin on Top of Boiled Milk”. Allegories of the Abject in Marlene van Niekerk’s Novels.” Journal of Literary Studies 32.4 (2016): 51-75. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. University of California Press, 1984. Kruger, Loren. Imagining the Edgy City: Writing, Performing, and Building the Johannesburg. Oxford University Press, 2013. Nuttall, Sarah and Achille Mbembe (eds.). Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis. Duke University Press, 2008. Ogden, Benjamin H. “The Palimpsest of Process and the Search for Truth in South Africa: How Phaswane Mpe Wrote Welcome to Our Hillbrow.” Safundi 14.2 (2013): 191-208. Stobie, Cheryl. “Dystopian Dreams from South Africa: Lauren Beukes’s Moxyland and Zoo City.” African Identities 10.4 (2012): 367-380.