HU Credits: 4

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: English

Semester: Yearly

Teaching Languages: English

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Professor Louise Bethlehem

Coordinator Email: louise.bethlehem@mail.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours: Monday 15-16 or by appt

Teaching Staff:
Prof Louise Bethlehem

Course/Module description:
In 1994 Nelson Mandela was elected as the first democratic president of South Africa. This course explores literature written in South African following the negotiated transition to democracy there. Among other things, it investigates the long reach of the apartheid past over the postapartheid present, while attempting to specify how the "New South Africa" differs from its racist predecessor.

Together, we will survey three central clusters of topics relevant to understanding postapartheid society: Gender and Embodiment, Witness and Reconciliation, and Urban Space.

New social conditions allow us as literary scholars to investigate how literature responded to them. A range of questions concerning the formal devices of postapartheid literature thus emerge into view. Together we will investigate the genres of postapartheid literature, including fictionalized autobiography, social and magic realism, metafiction and detective fiction.


The emphasis of our reading together falls mainly on prose, but we will also consider selected works of poetry. We will at times refer to cinematic renderings of selected literary texts or to works of documentary film, including Steve Jacobs’s production of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (2008), Mark Kaplan's Between Joyce and Remembrance (2003), and Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi (2005).

Course/Module aims:
I want to teach you to distinguish the characteristics of postapartheid literature across formative themes of the new democratic state: Body, Witness, Urban Space.

As your instructor, I aim to help you understand the social and historical framing of these texts so that this knowledge will empower your literary analysis of this corpus.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
By the end of the course, I expect you to be able to identify salient continuities and discontinuities between apartheid-era and postapartheid texts.

I will assist you with the skills needed to offer historically informed close textual readings of such texts.

I will expect you to be able to point to major historical events shaping literature after the transition to democracy.

Attendance requirements(%):
100

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Lesson and Seminar

In order to make our learning experience as effective as possible, this course combines synchronous teaching (online lectures during which we interact in real time) with asynchronous teaching (reading assignments, short reading responses, forums and activities that you complete independently before class). The whole range of activities is reflected in the final grade for the course, as detailed on the Moodle site.

The course will be given on Zoom for the duration of the first semester.

Announcements regarding the second semester will be given during the semester break, in accordance with the state of the Covid virus and its impact.

Course/Module Content:
First Semester

Lesson 1
Introduction
Denis Hirson “The Long Distance South African”(Handout on Moodle)

Lesson 2
Cusp Time
Nadine Gordimer “The Train to Rhodesia” and “A Lion on the Freeway” [Moodle]

Lesson 3 Faultlines
Mark Behr _The Smell of Apples_

Lesson 4
Childhood and Complicity
Mark Behr _The Smell of Apples_

Lesson 5
Double Agency
Mark Behr _The Smell of Apples_

Lesson 6
Adamastor’s Daughters
J.M. Coetzee _Disgrace_

Lesson 7
Disgrace Effects
J.M. Coetzee _Disgrace_

Lesson 8
Gendering Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee _Disgrace_

Lesson 9
Screening
Steve Jacobs _Disgrace_ Film version

Lesson 10
Beyond _Disgrace_: Controversies and Contestations. Class debate.

Lesson 11
In Saartjie’s Shadow
Zoë Wicomb _David’s Story_

Lesson 12
Shame and Identity
Zoë Wicomb _David’s Story_

Lesson 13
Declensions of the Truth
Zoë Wicomb _David’s Story_

Lesson 14
Film Screening Mark Kaplan
_Between Joyce and Remembrance_

SECOND SEMESTER

Lesson 15: Literature and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Antjie Krog "The Shepherd's Tale"

Lesson 16
Peer-Learning Session: Annotated Bibliography
Mark Sanders
Sanders, Mark. "Truth, Telling, Questioning: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull, and Literature after Apartheid." MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 46 no. 1, 2000, p. 13-41. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/mfs.2000.0011.


Lesson 17
Grievable Lives
Zakes Mda
_Ways of Dying_

Lesson 18
Magic Realism
Zakes Mda
_Ways of Dying_

Lesson 19
Art and/as Redemption
Zakes Mda
_Ways of Dying_

Lesson 20
Margie Orford
_Gallows Hill_

Lesson 21
Margie Orford
_Gallows Hill_


Lesson 22
Guest Forum on Genre Fiction: What does the detective novel teach us about gender and race/ethnicity

Lesson 23
After the Magic is Gone
Masande Ntshanga
_The Reactive_

Lesson 24
Survie
Masande Ntshanga
_The Reactive_

Lesson 25
Qualified Futures
Masande Ntshanga
_The Reactive_

Lesson 26
J(erusalem) Review of Books
Class Presentations

Lesson 27
Summary and Guidelines for Final Paper

Required Reading:
Primary Texts

Given the special conditions we face this year, the course aims to go *deep* rather than to go *broad*. We will thus be covering only six novels over the semester, together with additional short stories and works of poetry provided on Moodle. One additional novel must be read independently for book review purposes.

Kindle editions of all novels may be used. I recommend buying selected paperback editions of the works on which you plan to submit written work, or to borrow these from our library. Students from previous years may have books to sell.

COMPULSORY PRIMARY TEXTS
Novels

Behr, Mark. 1995. _The Smell of Apples_. (New York: St. Martins).

Coetzee, J.M. 1998. _Disgrace_. (Harmondsworth: Penguin).

Mda, Zakes. 1995. _Ways of Dying_. (Cape Town: Oxford University Press).

Ntshanga, Masande. 2016. _The Reactive_ Colombus, 0H: Two Dollar Radio.

Orford, Margie.
2011 _Gallows Hill_. UK: Atlantic Books.

Wicomb, Zoë. 2001. _David’s Story_. (New York: The Feminist Press).

ADDITIONAL PRIMARY TEXTS FOR BOOK REVIEW (Choose one of the following).

Beukes, Lauren. 2010. _Zoo City_ (Johannesburg: Jacana).

Coetzee, J.M. 2002. _Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II_. (London: Secker and Warburg).

Duiker, K. Sello. 2013 (2000). _Thirteen Cents._ (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press).

Mpe, Phaswane. 2001. _Welcome to Our Hillbrow_. Pietermaritzberg: University of KwaZulu Natal.

Ndebele, Njabulo. 2003. _The Cry of Winnie Mandela_. (Cape Town: David Philip).

Rose-Innes, Henrietta. 2011. _Nineveh_. (Cape Town: Umuzi).

Other postapartheid texts are possible but will need Professor Bethlehem's approval.

SELECTED SHORT WORKS ON MOODLE

De Kok, _Ingrid Seasonal Fire_s (New York: Seven Stories Press). [Extracts, Moodle]
Gordimer, Nadine. 1976. “A Lion on the Freeway.” In _Quarry_ ’76, edited by Lionel Abrahams and
Walter Saunders, 185-188. (Johannesburg: Ad. Donker). [Moodle]


Gordimer, Nadine. 2013. “The Moment Before the Gun Went Off.” In _Norton Anthology of English
Literature_, Volume 2, edited by Stephen Greenblatt. (New York: Norton). [Moodle]

Krog, Antjie. 2000. _Country of My Skull_ (New York: Random House). [Extracts, Moodle]
Themba, Can. 1994 (1963). “The Suit.” In The Heinemann Book of South African Short Stories, edited by Denis Hirson and Martin Trump, 143–52. Oxford: Oxford/UNESCO Publishing.

Wanner, Zukiswa. 2011. “The Dress that Fed the Suit.” In African Delights.
(Johannesburg: Jacana). [Moodle]

Xaba, Makhosazana. 2013. “Behind The Suit” and “The Suit Continued: The Other Side.” In Running and
Other Stories. (Cape Town: Modjaji Books).


SECONDARY SOURCES
Anker, Elizabeth. 2008. "Human Rights, Social Justice and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace." Modern Fiction
Studies 54(2): 233-267. DOI 10.1353/mfs.0.0020.
Attridge, Derek. 2005. “Zoë Wicomb’s Home Truths,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing
41(2): 156-65. DOI: 10.1080/17449850500252292
Barnard, Rita. 2000. “The Smell of Apples, Moby-Dick, and Apartheid Ideology.” Modern Fiction
Studies, 46(1): 207-226. DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2000.0001.
Barnard, Rita. 2004. “On Laughter, the Grotesque, and the South African Transition: Zakes Mda's
Ways of Dying.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 37(3): 277–302. www.jstor.org/stable/40267596.
Barnard, Rita. 2012. “Rewriting the Nation.” In The Cambridge History of South African Literature
edited by David Attwell and Derek Attridge, 652–675. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Barris, Ken. 2010. “The “Necessary Silence” of Realism in Zöe Wicomb's David's Story,” Scrutiny2,
15(2): 31-39, DOI: 10.1080/18125441.2010.537091
Bethlehem, Louise. 2018. “Continuity and Change in Postapartheid Fiction.” Oxford Research
Encyclopedia. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.193.
Chew, Dalglish. 2012. “Accounting for Language: Narrative Ethics and Economic Reparations in Antjie
Krog's Country of My Skull.” Safundi, 13 (1-2): 91-114, DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2011.642592.
Cornwell, Gareth. 2002. “Realism, Rape, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Critique: Studies in
Contemporary Fiction, 43(2): 307-322.
Cornwell, Gareth. 2003. “Disgraceland: History and the Humanities in Frontier Country.” English in
Africa 30(2): 43-68.
Dass, Minesh. 2009. Narrative Miscegenation in Zoë Wicomb's David's Story.” Scrutiny2,
14(2: 72-86, DOI: 10.1080/18125440903461820.
Davis, Emily S. “New Directions in Post-Apartheid South African Fiction and Scholarship.” Literature
Compass 10, no. /10 (2013): 797–804. DOI: 10.1111/lic3.12098.
Durrant, Sam. 2005. “The Invention of Mourning in Post-Apartheid Literature.” Third World
Quarterly, 26:3,441-450, DOI: 10.1080/01436590500033701
Farred, Grant. "Mourning the Postapartheid State Already? The Poetics of Loss in Zakes Mda's Ways of
Dying." MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 46(1): 183-206. Doi:10.1353/mfs.2000.0004.
Fenwick, Mac. 1996. “‘Tough guy, eh?’: The gangster‐figure in Drum.” Journal of Southern African
Studies, 22 (4): 617-632, DOI: 10.1080/03057079608708515.
Graham, Lucy. 2003. “Reading the Unspeakable: Rape in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Journal of Southern
African Studies, 29(2): 433-444.
Graham, Shane. 2003. “The Truth Commission and Post-Apartheid Literature in South Africa,”
Research in African Literatures, 34 (1): 11-30.
Krog, Antjie. 2007. “Fact Bordering Fiction and the Honesty of ‘I’” River Teeth, 8(2): 34-43.
Macmillan, Hugh William & Lucy Valerie Graham. 2011. “The ‘Great Coloured Question’ and the
Cosmopolitan: Fiction, History and Politics in David's Story,” Safundi, 12 (3-4): 331-347,
DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2011.586833.
Marais, Michael. 2001. “Very morbid phenomena: ‘Liberal Funk’, the ‘Lucy-syndrome’ and J.M.
Coetzee's Disgrace.”Scrutiny2, 6(1): 32-28.
Marais, Mike. 2006. "J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace and the Task of the Imagination," Journal of Modern
Literature, 29(2): 75-93.
Mardorossian, Carine M. “Rape and the Violence of Representation in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace.”
Research in African Literatures 42(4): 72-83. DOI: 10.1353/ral.2011.0069.
Mbembe, Achille. 2004. “Aesthetics of Superfluity.” Public Culture, 16(3): 373–405.
Moss, Laura. 2006. "'Nice Audible Crying': Editions, Testimonies, and Country of my Skull," Research in
African Literatures, 39(4): 85-104.
Samuelson, Meg. 2003. “Cracked vases and Untidy Seams: Narrative Structure
and Closure in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and South African Fiction,”
Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 15(2): 63-76. DOI: 10.1080/1013929X.2003.9678159.
Samuelson, Meg. 2008. “The Urban Palimpsest: Re‐Presenting Sophiatown,” Journal of Postcolonial
Writing, 44 (1):63-75, DOI: 10.1080/17449850701820764.
Saunders, Rebecca. 2005. "Disgrace in the Time of a Truth Commission." Parallax 11(3): 99-106.
Spain, Andrea. 2016. Transitional Encounters: Practices of Queer Futurity in K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen
Cents,” Safundi, 17:4, 416-433, DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2016.1233622
Spearey, Susan. 2008. “May the Unfixable Broken Bone/ […] Give Us New Bearings”: Ethics, Affect
and Irresolution in Ingrid de Kok's “A Room Full of Questions” Postcolonial Text, 4(1): 2-24.
Stobie, Cheryl. 2008. “Fissures in Apartheid's ‘Eden’: Representations of Bisexuality in The Smell of
Apples by Mark Behr.” Research in African Literatures, 39(1): 70-86.
DOI: 10.1353/ral.2008.0001.
Stobie, Cheryl. 2009. “Postcolonial Pomosexuality: Queer/Alternative fiction after Disgrace.” Current
Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 21(1-2): 320-341.
DOI: 10.1080/1013929X.2009.9678324.
Stobie, Cheryl. 2017. “Re-tailoring Can Themba’s ‘The Suit’: Queer Temporalities in Two Stories
by Makhosazana Xaba,” Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa,
29(2): 79-88, DOI: 10.1080/1013929X.2017.1347421
Van der Vlies, Andrew. 2011. “An Interview with Mark Behr,” Safundi: The Journal of South African
and American Studies, 12:1, 1-26.

Additional Reading Material:
Optional Further Reading
Barnard, Rita. 2007. Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007.
Bystrom, Kerry. 2016. Democracy at Home in South Africa: Family Fictions and Transitional Culture.
Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Chapman, Michael. 2009. “Introduction: Conjectures on South African Literature.” Current Writing: Text
and Reception in Southern Africa 21 (1–2) (2009): 1–23.
Munro, Brenna M. 2012. South Africa and the Dream of Love to Come: Queer Sexuality and the Struggle
for Freedom. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Nuttall, Sarah. Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-Apartheid.
Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2009.
Samuelson, Meg. Remembering the Nation, Dismembering Women? Stories of the South African
Transition. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2007.

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 0 %
Participation in Tutorials 15 %
Project work 25 %
Assignments 0 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 40 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 20 %
Interactive Bibliography

Additional information:
1.General: Regular weekly attendance on ZOOM and participation in weekly forum are obligatory.

2.Students are required to cover selected readings in the theoretical bibliography in accordance with the weekly schedule of readings.


3.Students are expected to show close familiarity with the primary and theoretical texts under discussion.

COMPOSITION OF GRADE
1. Forums and class participation
(15% of final grade).

2.Peer Learning Interactive Bibliography Assignment (20% of final grade).

3.Book review
(25% of final grade).

4.Final paper
(40% of final grade).