UCT Summer School – Upcoming Events

UCT Summer School has lots to offer as evidenced in this programme of upcoming events.

THE DETECTIVES’ CLUB – Facilitator: Professor John HigginsProfessor John Higgins

What is it about the genre of detective fiction that makes it so appealing? Each month we will meet in the Detectives’ Club to seek to solve the mystery of why the detectives of the Detectives’ Club (and their authors) continue to interest and enthrall us. In this online seminar we will have a look at some of the rich history of the genre; how its authors and their detectives respond to the pressures of their times, as well as at some of the cinematic adaptions of their work.The Detectives’ Club will continue meeting this year, introducing new writers and their detectives, and discussing their characters, methods and circumstances.
March 3: Edgar Allan Poe and Auguste Dupin – ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’; ‘The Purloined Letter’ (1841; 1844)
March 31: Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot – Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
April 7: P.D. James and Adam Dalgliesh – The Lighthouse (2005)
May 5: Walter Mosley and Easy Rawlins – Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)
June 3: Deon Meyer and Benny Griessel – Devil’s Peak (2007)

COURSE FEES: R450; staff R405; students R337  | TIME: 5.30 to 6.30 pm | PLATFORM: MS Teams. Booking is through Webtickets. On confirmation of payment participants will be sent the links.

Emeritus Professor John Higgins is the former Arderne Chair of Literature at the University of Cape Town. John Higgins is currently a Senior Research Scholar in CHED at UCT.His most recent publications include ‘Montage’, ‘The Market Place of Cultural Studies’, ‘Getting Academic Freedom into Focus’ and the artbook 40 nights/40 days: from the lockdown (with Hanien Conradie).

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WRITE YOUR LIFE STORY: FROM MEMOIR ESSAY TO FULL-LENGTH NARRATIVE – Presenter: Sally Cranswick

A series of five workshops from 10am–12pm, Saturday 5 March to Saturday 2 April 2022

Whether you are writing for publication or for family and friends, we will discuss ways to write your life story in an engaging, reader-friendly way. During the workshops we will look at established texts, work with written and spoken prompts and submit written exercises for feedback. Bring your memoir thoughts and ideas to the workshops and we will work on:
1. Point of view, voice and style
2. Identifying the central theme
3. Structuring narrative and handling timelines
4. Collated essays vs. a longer narrative
5. Truth and memory
6. Writing our ancestors.

FEE: R1 500. This course will be offered on Zoom. The link will be provided upon registration. Booking is through Webtickets. | INFO: E ems@uct.ac.za T  021 650 2634

Sally Cranswick is a writer, story coach and workshop facilitator with a special interest in memoir and life-writing. Her collection of short stories, Women out of Water, was published by Modjaji Books in 2021. She has an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from UCT and a BA with First Class Honours in Creative & Media Writing from Middlesex University, England. She has written numerous features and short stories for UK magazines and before coming to South Africa, Sally lived in many countries around the world and worked as a singer in the UK and Southeast Asia.
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THE JS BACH JOURNEY – Presenter: Elizabeth Handley

Humanity has always been on the move, driven by war and revolution, pestilence and persecution, or simply an insatiable curiosity to see the world. Not so the Bachs. They stayed put in the same area, in north-eastern Germany, for generations.

In  this two-hour lecture we shall discover why Johann Sebastian, the most brilliant of this celebrated clan, seemed apparently incurious about the world beyond this orbit, while his more cosmopolitan contemporary, George Frederik Handel travelled extensively, and settled in London. It will be seen why his music was nonetheless international in style, fell out of favour towards the end of his life, and then regained an interest and popularity during the nineteenth century that it still enjoys today.

Following in his footsteps, we shall begin, as Bach did, in the small towns where he was born and worked, and end in Leipzig, where he spent his mature and final years. We shall hear his music and see where it was played in the churches, halls and courts where he performed it. Join me on this fascinating journey, and acquire an appreciation of the oeuvre of this cornerstone of Western civilisation.

WHEN: Monday 14 March 6.30 to 8.30 pm | COURSE FEES: R220 (in person); R180 (online) | WHERE: Lecture Theatre 3, Kramer Law Building, Middle Campus. BOOKING: Webtickets | .INFO: E ems@uct.ac.za  T 021 650 2634

Elizabeth Handley is an accredited lecturer with The Arts Society, UK (formerly NADFAS). She played the harpsichord and flute in various Baroque ensembles in South Africa, and sang soprano in the Symphony Choir of Johannesburg. She was a classical music programme compiler and producer at the SABC, and then assistant to an impresario, organising concert tours for overseas artists throughout Southern Africa. Before transferring to Sweden she also presented the pre-concert talks for the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra. She has been teaching adults the history and appreciation of music for many years in SA, and more recently in Stockholm, London and Milan. She also lectures at the University of Cape Town Summer School, and will also do so at the Marlborough College (UK) Summer School in July 2022. She is the editor of her own online culture-travel magazine: www.joiedevivremagazine.com

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THE POET’S CLUB – Facilitator: Professor John Higgins

Do you ever read or write poetry? Would it interest you to ‘meet’ some poets and see how their writing works? Each month in the Poet’s Club we will meet a different poet (through the medium of their writing), focusing on the careful reading of one or two poems in particular, and, showing, in this reading, something of how the poem comes about. No in-depth knowledge of literature or history is presumed: only the curiosity and inclination to meet some poets and their poems at the Poets’ Club.

17 March: John Clare (1793–1864) John Clare is that rare thing: a truly peasant poet, born to semi-literate farm labourers, but somehow managing to flourish (for a time) as a recognised poet. His final desperate years were spent in an asylum. We will meet up with him through his extraordinarily moving and desperate poem ‘I am’, written in the Northampton Asylum.

14 April: W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Yeats is surely one of Ireland’s greatest and most complex poets.. We will meet up with him in his Irish Mystical Period of the 1890s; at the time of Easter Uprising,
and in his final years.

19 May: Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) As with Clare, meeting Plath is an occasion for pain and jubilation, as deep feelings of dismay give rise to ecstatic expression in a powerful body of work.

17 June: Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) A complex and down-to-earth figure whose writing expresses a constant self-making in the challenging world of a troubled Ireland.

14 July: Ingrid de Kok is one of South Africa’s most celebrated poets, writing constantly on the sharp edges of public and private life.

WHEN: Starts Thursday 17 March, 5.30 to 6.30 pm – -thereafter monthly | COURSE FEES: R450; staff R405; students R337 | PLATFORM: MS Teams. Booking is through Webtickets.
On confirmation of payment participants will be sent the links.

UCT Summer School is certainly being generous by extending their programme into July!  A great way to keep warm 🙂