White South-African Writers

1–3 credits · Undergraduate

I would be thrilled to work with students on an independent study that addressed the work of white South-African writers whose fiction (and in some cases their political activism) challenged the South African apartheid government. I would imagine a directed reading of white South-African novelists - Alan Paton, Nadinne Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee - whose work (and in some cases whose lives) constituted resistance to apartheid. The many possibilities include Alan Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country(a new film adaptation, starring Mark Rylance and Johnny Depp, is set to be released this year) and Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful; Nadinee Gordimer's The Conservationist, Occasion for Loving, The Burgher's Daughter, Get a Life, and The Pickup(2001); J.M. Coetzee Waiting for the Barbarians,Disgrace, The Life & Times of Michael K, and essays from White Writing. Interested students could undertake reading and discussing works by a single author, or a combination of the titles listed above by different writers.