Carrol Clarkson on Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace by JM Coetzee

On Thursday 29 October the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA’s) Great Texts / Big Questions guest speaker is Carrol Clarkson, an Associate Professor in English Department at the University of Cape Town.  She will be discussing the work of Nobel Prize-winning novelist, J.M. Coetzee.

 
GIPCA’s Great Texts / Big Questions popular lecture series provides an opportunity to hear a leading intellectual discuss one of life’s “big questions” or a significant book or artwork. The great texts under discussion in Clarkson’s lecture are Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace. The publication of Waiting for the Barbarians confirmed Coetzee's standing as a novelist of international repute; Disgrace is Coetzee's most widely discussed - and his most controversial work, not least because of the novel's winning of the Booker Prize in 1999, the charges of racism lodged against the novel at the Human Rights Commission, and the recent release of the film, Disgrace, starring John Malkovich.

Clarkson’s research interests lie in the philosophy of language and in post apartheid South African literature and art. Her most recent publication is her book on Coetzee, entitled J.M. Coetzee: Countervoices. In her GIPCA lecture she will be asking a big question about the limits of literary representation, with specific reference to Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace.
The image used above is 365-45 by Nils Geylen and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.