AAAS 85.01 South African Literature in English
This course will examine works by South African men and women of various ethnicities who have chosen to write in English since the publication of Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm in 1883. This richly diverse literature will be tracked through the cultural and political history of South Africa with primary emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries before and after the fall of Apartheid. Confrontation between black militancy and white oppression characterizes much writing and social interaction in South Africa before the fall of Apartheid, but complex forms of multi-ethnic coexistence and interchange have also been evident since the first white settlement of the country in 1652. Recent work by J.M. Coetzee and Zakes Mda among others explores the difficult, unmapped terrain of post-Apartheid South Africa. Works by the following writers may be included in the course: Olive Schreiner, Solomon Plaatje, Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Zoe Wicomb, Alan Paton, J.M Coetzee, Njabulo Ndebele, Athol Fugard, Nelson Mandela.
Cross Listed Courses
ENGL 55.13