Criticism as Intervention Course (ARTS#2004)

The J. M. Coetzee Centre is proud to be collaborating with the School of Humanities to bring University of Adelaide's students the course "Criticism as Intervention: The Fictions of J. M. Coetzee" (#ARTS2004). This course will introduce undergraduate students to the work of J. M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate and Professor at the University of Adelaide, and arguably the world’s greatest living writer. Led by prestigious literary and philosophy scholar Professor Andrew Gibson, students will have a rare opportunity to practice literary criticism as cultural intervention.

This course will focus on J. M. Coetzee’s oeuvre to discuss the politics of critical engagement in regard to the problematic character of contemporary global, neoliberal culture. It will consist of six lectures—six angles of approach to the work of J. M. Coetzee—that will explore the history and possible relevance of an interventionist form of criticism.

Seminars will look closely at the following texts, in order: Homo Sacer (1998) by Giorgio Agamben; Expulsions (2014) by Saskia Sassen; Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History (2017) by Joseph North; Against Democracy: Literary Experience in the Era of Emancipations (2012) by Simon During; Youth (2002), The Life and Times of Michael K (1983), The Lives of Animals (1999); Elizabeth Costello (2003) and The Childhood of Jesus (2013) by J. M. Coetzee. Workshops will be on selected chapters and passages from these books.