The first attempt at shifting the structure of postgraduate teaching at Rhodes University’s English Department took the form of a recent colloquium, entitled “Reflections on the Study of South African Literature”.
Professor Dirk Klopper, Head of Department of English at Rhodes University said encouraging student participation was a key objective of the event, which provided a platform for Rhodes English department staff and students to share their research interests.
“This made it different from other colloquiums which often host experts,” Prof Klopper explained, adding that the colloquium served as a first step in the exploration of ways in which to innovate postgraduate courses, including making the honours and Masters courses more research driven and participatory.
“With projected increases in postgraduate numbers from 2013 one of the concerns of staff of the English department is the increased workload this will require as a result, including more Honours level teaching and thesis supervision and a decrease in the time available for staff research,” he said.
As such Prof Klopper has developed strategies to address these challenges. “As far as possible postgraduate teaching should dovetail lecturers’ research interests. We will also begin introducing texts that we are interested in researching. The whole process becomes more exploratory with students acting as co-researchers and participants in research processes,” he said.
Participants in the colloquium included Professor Mike Marais, “Vagrant writing, or Beckett in Africa”, Professor Dirk Klopper, “‘Something appalling has happened’: Beauty and the sublime in Justin Cartwright’s White Lightning”, research associate Andrew van der Vlies, “On Loose Ends: Futurity, Banality and the Situation in Contemporary SA Writing”, and students Rowan Roux, “A Disturbed Childhood and Fractured Selves and Fragmented Realities in Rachel Zadok’s Gem Squash Tokoloshe”, Yolisa Kenqu, “Writing Black.
By Sarah-Jane Bradfield