Approaches to Teaching Coetzee's Disgrace and Other Works ed. by Laura Wright, Jane Poyner, and Elleke Boehmer, and: Teaching Human Rights in Literary and Cultural Studies ed. by Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Elisabeth Swanson Goldberg

Abstract

Reviewed by: Approaches to Teaching Coetzee's Disgrace and Other Works ed. by Laura Wright, Jane Poyner, and Elleke Boehmer, and: Teaching Human Rights in Literary and Cultural Studies ed. by Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Elisabeth Swanson Goldberg Kelly Hewson (bio) Laura Wright, Jane Poyner, and Elleke Boehmer, editors. Approaches to Teaching Coetzee's Disgrace and Other Works. MLA, 2014. Approaches to Teaching World Literature. Pp. 227. US $24. Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Elisabeth Swanson Goldberg, editors. Teaching Human Rights in Literary and Cultural Studies. MLA, 2015. Options for Teaching. Pp. 362. US $29. Laura Wright, Jane Poyner, and Elleke Boehmer's Approaches to Teaching Coetzee's Disgrace and Other Works includes contributions that were selected based on a global questionnaire sent to university teachers; twenty-seven responded and twelve are included in the collection. As Poyner indicates in the volume's first section, "Materials," the bulk of the contributors are from South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States (3). Readers are not privy to how and where the questionnaire was distributed, for how long a period it was available, or the questions it posed, and some of us may be left wondering why a volume published under the banner of the Modern Language Association's "Approaches to Teaching World Literature" series did not try harder to extend its reach. However, the two-part collection—"Materials," in which Poyner provides both novice and seasoned teachers of J. M. Coetzee's writing plenty to work with, and "Approaches," which discusses teaching methods—is replete with rigorous, thought-provoking pedagogical strategies rehearsed in a range of institutional and classroom settings. From secondary schools to public and private universities, from large survey classes to graduate seminars, in courses on literature, theory, existentialism, resistance, philosophy, general education, and first-year composition, inspiring educators and their students wrestle with the complexities and nuances of Coetzee's writing. The essays that bracket the collection introduce and reinforce the themes throughout. Rita Barnard's "Why Not to Teach Coetzee" smartly explicates the numerous teacher/teaching vignettes imbued with eros in Coetzee's work and encourages readers to consider "an erotics of pedagogy" when encountering his texts (40). The concluding piece, Patrick Hayes' "Coetzee and Close Reading," asserts students' pleasures in the aesthetic experiences of reading while expertly marshalling many of Coetzee's texts to reveal how they reflect contemporary literary debates and gesture beyond stalemates. Between the two are captivating essays from teachers in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Warwick, Amherst, Waverly, Petersburg, Cullowhee, [End Page 245] Singapore, Stockholm, and Jerusalem that astutely demonstrate the emergent, residual, and/or dominant knowledges that readers' encounters with Disgrace elicit. Of particular interest to those approaching South Africa from afar are David Attwell's essay describing the experience of teaching Coetzee at the University of the Western Cape in the 1980s and the curricular choices made at the University of Witswatersrand in tandem with the nation's transition in the 2000s; Carrol Clarkson's piece on the University of Cape Town students' responses to Disgrace and its film adaptation, both partly set on campus; and Gerald Gaylard's reading of the novel as an impediment to closure in the "new" South Africa. Stephen Clingman outlines the novel's reception history and how his defense of and deeply felt approach to Disgrace make their way into his Massachusetts seminar class, while Kay Heath reveals her preparations for and treatments of the novel in an African postcolonialism class at a historically black university in West Virginia. The volume covers Coetzee's other works from Dusklands through to his "Australian-period" writing, as Boehmer categorizes it (117). Michael Bell uses these works to introduce students to and engage them with arguments about the value of imaginative literatures; Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn to expand students' "horizon[s] of expectation" as readers; Boehmer to consider what approaching Coetzee as a transnational writer offers; Wright to inform students in America about America; Wendy Woodward to reveal the uncomfortable lessons proffered by Elizabeth Costello; Robert Spencer to think through the politics and ethics of representations; Emily S. Davis to facilitate understandings of deconstruction; and Shannon Payne to analyse Coetzee's texts' intricate rhetorical situations. Numerous contributors underscore the...