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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Giving Vibrant Voice to Great Literature
The Coetzee Collective is the leading international research group on the writings of J.M. Coetzee, the South African
2003 Nobel laureate in literature. Coetzee’s work has sparked an extraordinarily vibrant culture of research, teaching and
conversation among postgraduate students in literature at UCT.
The research hub, originally founded in 2006 as an
informal discussion group, is hosted by Associate
Professor Carrol Clarkson of the Department of
English Language and Literature. A series of seminars
at the university is sponsored by the hub, often
featuring overseas visitors, while links are fostered
with acclaimed researchers and postgraduate
students throughout the world.
UCT postgraduate students in the English Department
are at the core of the burgeoning international and
inter-disciplinary field of “Coetzee Studies” which,
in addition to the study of South African and world
literatures, includes scholarship in fields like animal
ethics, translation, linguistics, film studies and
jurisprudence.
Two postgraduate students – Joshua Maserow and
Eckard Smuts – presented papers at an October 2012
conference on Coetzee at Justus-Liebig University
in Giessen, Germany. The event presented an
opportunity for the Coetzee Collective to broaden
the scope of its network and strengthen ties with its
international members. A positive outcome of the
conference has been an ongoing correspondence
between researchers from the two universities.
Maserow has since graduated with distinction while
Smuts is about to submit his doctoral thesis. They are
joined by Daniella Cadiz Bedini, who wrote her MA on
Coetzee, and will graduate with distinction in June 2013.
Still more good news: Dr Hedley Twidle’s essay on
Coetzee won the Bodley-Head Financial Times Essay
Award – a major international honour in the field.
The 2012 highlight for the collective, which took place
in December, was undoubtedly a visit to UCT by J.M.
Coetzee himself. He read from his new novel,
The
Childhood of Jesus,
not
yet published at the time.
Coetzee's latest work, in a departure from previous
novels, is the story of a young child's co-operative
relationship with a man who is not his father and explores
themyriad assumptions about theworld normally invisible
in ordinary adult life, and the limits and provisionality of
any single explanation of a phenomenon.
Research Project
Coetzee Collective, Rebecca Saunders
(Illinois State)
The Concept of Foreignness in
Waiting for the Barbarians
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