File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postco_1995/postco_Mar.95, message 31


Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 16:02:17 SAST-2
From: "a.c. fick" <ANG-AT-beattie.uct.ac.za>
Subject: Re: African literature and culture class


Dear Marilyn (and all others)

I apologise if there has been a problem with RCPT mail from my end.  
I have reset the controls on my mail filtering and features, and hope 
this is at an end now.  Else, I am getting professional help from our 
local server manager regarding this matter.

Well, regarding postgraduate (M.A., M.Phil., M.A. Literary Studies 
and Ph.D.) research on African literature in the department of 
English language and literature at the University of Cape Town.  As 
the Research Register Supervisor (glamorous title for hunting down 
graduate students to fill in the information sheets I spend night 
awake formulating!), I have access to the details of all the research 
by graduate students in this department.  What follows below is a 
brief sketch of the areas relevant to postcolonial and the 
information requested by various individuals.

(1)  Robyn Alexander (Ms.)
    Completed an Honours level dissertation called "Education, 
gender, anxiety: Tsitsi Dangaremga's *Nervous Conditions*", looking at 
the particular novel, colonial and traditional patriarchy and their 
collusion in oppression of women, and how women feature in education 
in the colonial/postcolonial context.
    She is currently working on an MA thesis on Fay Weldon and 
motherhood.


(2) Gabeba Baderoon (Ms.)
    Completed an Honours level thesis on the satires of Tom Sharpe, 
looking at satire and parody.  She is currently completing an MA 
thesis on postmodern television, looking at Twin Peaks, Moonlighting, 
and The Simpsons.  However, she also has a keen interest in Southern 
African media, especially television and film.

(3) Alastair Bruce (Mr.)
    Completed an Honours level thesis on "Aspects of NArrative in the 
novels of J.M. Coetzee", looking at contemporary theories of 
narrative, narrative temporality (Riceour), and historiography.  
    Currently working on an MA thesis expanding on the work done in 
his honours dissertation, but also looking at hermeneutics, 
philosophy of ethics, the history and reception of writing in South 
Africa.

(4) Pumla Gqola (Ms.)
    Completed an Honours level dissertation on "A Feminist Criticism 
of some of Nadine Gordimer's novels", relating Gordimer specifically 
to protest literature in this country.  
    Currently working on an MA thesis called "Black Woman You Are On 
Your Own: The gender politics of black consciousness literature with 
particular reference to the *Staffrider* magazines 1978-1988".  Her 
thesis deals with short fiction and poetry published in Staffrider 
(for a whole decade South Africa's premier literary magazine 
publishing especialyl black authors with no access to regular 
publication facilities), with a focus on black consciousness, 
feminism, womanism, Marxist-feminism, Steve Biko and Gwala.

(5) Brendon Nicholls (Mr.)
    Currently working on an MA thesis called "Problems of 
Representation and Representativeness in Ngugi wa Thiong'O's 
fictional oeuvre", examining issues such as oral literature and myth, 
traditionalism, and socialism, and the nexus of these, we well as 
post-futurism, and using the work of Helene Cixous.

(6) George Samiselo (Mr.)
    Currently completing a Ph.D. thesis called "The audience of the 
African novel from 1958: Towards a critical method (A study of select 
novels by Chinua Achebe, Shimmer Chinodya, Ayi Kwei Armah and Ngugi 
wa Thiong'O).  George has published a paper on the role of creative 
writing in Africa in NGOMA: Journal of Creative writing and Research 
at the university of Zambia, and has presented various unpublished 
papers on Zambian fiction and Ayi Kwei Armah.

(7) Lisa Treffry-Goatley (Ms.)
    Completed an Honours level dissertation in Linguistics at Rhodes 
University in Grahamstown called "Developing an approach to teaching 
English literacy in South Africa: a broad discussion of theories and 
practices", looking at issues such as language and power, adult 
education, literacy from an applied linguistics approach.
    Currently completing an M.Phil. in English and Linguistics 
called, tentatively, "Language learning experiences of English 
additional language speakers (EALS) in the tertiary context: with 
particular reference to an English Department environment.

(8) Angelo Fick (Mr.)
    Currently completing an MA thesis called "Limited Possibilities: 
the options available to black women as characters in Southern 
African allegorical and futurist fiction", which examines the 
representation of black women's bodies and subjectivities in four 
allegories (Coetzee's WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS, Stockenstrom's THE 
EXPEDITION TO THE BAOBAB TREE, Bessie Head's A QUESTION OF POWER, and 
Mike Nicol's HORSEMAN/THE POWERS THAT BE/THIS DAY AND AGE).  My 
approach is from a French feminist perspective, using the work of 
Toril Moi, Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, as well 
as the theories of Bhabha, Said, Derrida and other, to examine how 
the nexus of feminism, postcolonialism and postmodernism affect 
representation and self-representation in each of these works.

Other students (who have been delinquent and have not handed me their 
research details; may the road come up to meet their faces and may 
they live in interesting times!) also working in African/South 
African literature include Sandy Young, who is working on prison 
writings by African women, and Louise Green and Roshila Nair, who are 
working on popular culture and African literary politics/media.

Tenured researchers working on African literature in the department 
include the following:
    Prof. J.M. Coetzee (author/academic)
    Prof. Andre Brink (author/academic)
    Assoc.Prof. Dorothy Driver 
    Assoc.Prof. Nic Visser
    Assoc.Prof. Geoffrey Haresnape (HoD)
    Assoc.Prof. Ian Glenn 
    Dr. Kelwyn Sole (poet/academic)
    Dr. Stephen Watson (poet/academic)
    Dr. David Schalkwyk (academic/translated Schoeman's ANOTHER 
        COUNTRY from afrikaans into English for Picador in 1991)
    AssocProf. Eve Bertelsen (South African media)
    Assoc.PRof. Brenda Cooper (academic/chair of African Studies 
        Centre at University of Cape Town)                       
    

Thank you all.  And glad to have been of help.  Anyone interested in 
more information regarding any specific course/s, researchers, 
teachers, etc. may contact me and I will pass your details along to 
the relevant person/s concerned.

Angelo                     






(2)



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