A “Horrific Breakdown of Reason": Holmes and the Postcolonial Anti-Detective Novel, Lost Ground
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/157980 , vital:40136 , ISBN 978-1-137-55595-3
- Description: Using the notion of “negative hermeneutics,” this chapter examines how Michiel Heyns’s novel Lost Ground draws on the heritage of the Sherlock Holmes stories. It argues that Heyns’s representation of contemporary South Africa necessitates a shift from the emphasis on the epistemological quests of nineteenth-century detective fiction to the “negative hermeneutics” and ontological concerns of postcolonial anti-detective fiction. An analysis of Lost Ground reveals direct intertextual and metatextual references to “The Silver Blaze,” yet the novel subversively presents a detective figure that is the antithesis of Holmes. Thus the chapter demonstrates how in postcolonial social and cultural contexts the ratiocinative process is hermeneutically inadequate and socio-political analysis comes to replace, or combine with, the feats of reason epitomized by Holmes.
- Full Text:
Boast and bellow, giggle or chatter: gender and verbs of speech in children's fiction
- Authors: Hunt, Sally
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139279 , vital:37722 , ISBN no ISBN , https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/corpus/events/2017/cl2017/index.aspx
- Description: Continued gender inequality and gendered representations in the media, broadly construed, remain of concern because of the dialectic relationship between language and society. One source of gender cues is fiction written for and consumed by children. The characters encountered in the pages of a popular book constitute the stuff of identity building and may become role models for thousands of young and impressionable readers.
- Full Text:
Chapter one: Founding and establishing an imperial university: the first twenty-five years
- Authors: Maylam, Paul
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Rhodes University -- History , Rhodes Unviersity , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Grahamstown
- Language: English
- Type: book , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59896 , vital:27689
- Description: Critics of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that sat in the late 1990s have sometimes pointed to its failure to examine the role of larger collectivities in colluding with or acquiescing in the apartheid system. Universities, for instance, have been singled out for their failure both to make submissions to the TRC and to acknowledge openly their past shortcomings during the apartheid era. The historically white, English-medium universities – among them Rhodes University – liked to project themselves as liberal institutions. This book puts this self-representation to the test by looking critically at the operation and functioning of Rhodes University during the segregation and apartheid eras. This study is one of very few that recounts and analyses the whole history of a South African university in a single volume. It covers the founding of Rhodes University College (as it was then called) in 1904, traces its development over the decades, through the attainment of independent status in 1951, ending with a full consideration of the transformation challenges that the university has faced in the post-apartheid era. This is a critical study that points to some of the university’s past failures. But there is also a celebratory dimension, as the book highlights some of the achievements and successes of those who have worked and studied at Rhodes University over the past 112 or so years. , Please note that only the first chapter of the book is available online. For further information, or should you wish to purchase a copy of this item, please contact Bulelani Mothlabane (b.mothlabaneATru.ac.za).
- Full Text:
Cultural adaptations of Dance Movement Psychotherapy experiences: from a UK higher education context to working with communities in southern Africa facing water related inequality
- Authors: Copteros, Athina , Karkou, Vicky , Palmer, Carolyn G
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141995 , vital:38022 , ISBN 9780199949298 , https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199949298.001.0001
- Description: Water plays a key role in all our lives and in South Africa epitomizes a space in which political inequalities have played themselves out with devastating consequences. The current ecological crisis demands new ways of engaging with ourselves, each other and nature. This research is an initial exploration on the use of a body-based creative movement approach within a transdisciplinary complex social-ecological systems researcher group. The research objective discussed in this chapter is to develop culturally relevant themes from professional Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) training in the UK for application in a South African water resource management context. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to identify culturally relevant themes based on the recorded perceptions of the phenomenon of the training while it was taking place. The themes of: Awareness of Power and Difference; Therapeutic Adaptability; Sharing Leadership and Connecting with the Environment were identified. Artistic Inquiry was used to creatively reflect on the themes and add an embodied response to the discussion. The cultural adaptations of DMP can contribute to a more engaged and non-hierarchical collaboration between practitioners and the people and communities they serve, which would facilitate a therapeutic practice that works with both internal, external (and even transcendental) factors.
- Full Text:
Enabling green skills: Pathways to sustainable development
- Authors: Ramsarup, Presha , Ward, Mike , Rosenberg, Eureta , Jenkin, Nicola , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436702 , vital:73294 , ISBN 978-0-620-79605-7 , https://www.vetafrica4-0.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Green-Skills-Sourcebook-Jul18.pdf
- Description: The purpose of this source book is to support skills planning entities to work with employers to identify and anticipate green skills needs and to build these needs into occupational de-scriptors and sector skills plans. Thus, the source book com-plements the existing Enabling Document (DEA, 2010b) and provides guidelines to support Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) to embed environmental considerations, related occupations and green skills into their skills planning processes.
- Full Text:
Evil and the Hero-Villain Binary in Deon Meyer’s Post-Apartheid Crime Thriller, Devil’s Peak:
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha , van der Wielen, Karlien
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/157991 , vital:40137 , ISBN 9781498533423
- Description: The Functions of Evil Across Disciplinary Contexts explores answers to two important questions about the age-old theme of evil: is there any use in using the concept of evil in cultural, psychological, or other secular evaluations of the world and its productions? Most importantly, if there is, what might these functions be? By looking across several disciplines and analyzing evil as it is referenced across a broad spectrum of phenomena, this work demonstrates the varying ways that we interact with the ethical dilemma as academics, as citizens, and as people. The work draws from authors in different fields—including history, literary and film studies, philosophy, and psychology—and from around the world to provide an analysis of evil in such topics as deeply canonical as Beowulf and Shakespeare to subjects as culturally resonant as Stephen King, Captain America, or the War on Terror. By bringing together this otherwise disparate collection of scholarship, this collection reveals that discussions of evil across disciplines have always been questions of how cultures represent that which they find socially abhorrent. This work thus opens the conversation about evil outside of field-specific limitations, simultaneously demonstrating the assumptions that undergird the manner by which such a conversation proceeds.
- Full Text:
Germinating in the cracks: the identity of contemporary Zambian art
- Authors: Mulenga, Andrew
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146222 , vital:38506 , ISBN 9783863883065
- Description: Culture is the heritage of us all. Some may be more interested than others in the treasures of the past, but no one can fail to take pride in his country's participation in the story of mankind as represented in carvings, sculpture, music, painting, and the other arts (Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe 1964). After gaining independence in 1964, the next move for Zambia, like most newly-born African states at the time, was nation-building.
- Full Text:
Learning to teach in higher education in South Africa
- Authors: Council on Higher Education (South Africa) , Leibowitz, Brenda , Bozalek, Vivienne , Garraway, James , Herman, Nicoline , Jawitz, Jeff , Muhuro, Patricia , Ndebele, Clever , Quinn, Lynn , Van Schalkwyk, Susan , Vorster, Jo-Anne E , Winberg, Chris
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66524 , vital:28958
- Description: publisher version , Preface by Prof Narend Baijnath: “Teaching and learning are never neutral. Every aspect is ideological in nature: from the admission of students, to the selection of curriculum content, to the adoption of learning materials, to the pedagogical approach, to the mode of assessment and the quality of the feedback. The form of disciplinary knowledge may vary from the more subjective and contentious to the more objective and broadly accepted, but teaching and learning remain highly political acts across all institutions, faculties and disciplines. So it is unsurprising that when a country undergoes major social change, ideological demands are placed on teaching and learning.” (HE Reviewed, CHE 2016 p.143). There are many and diverse influences on teaching and learning as a political act, from broad social movements that challenge what is taught, to the ways in which resources have historically been allocated, to the values and goals of different disciplines, and the more immediate institutional and faculty contexts in which they take place. Learning to teach in higher education in South Africa is a timely and well-researched contribution to understanding the influences of that more immediate layer, that is, of institutional contexts, on the professional learning of academics in their roles as teachers. It explores questions of whether it matters to the professional learning process whether one is teaching in a context in which resources are scarce, or whether the departmental leadership style is authoritarian, or whether an institution has a strong drive to increase research output. And if it matters, what are the implications for facilitating opportunities for academics to ‘learn to teach’ in higher education? Undertaken by a team of academic staff developers across eight institutional contexts, this research report offers a comprehensive, nuanced and theorised set of insights into the role that context plays in the ways in which academics learn to teach. Such insights can inform the development of professional learning initiatives at both the institutional and national policy levels. The report is one of the outcomes of a large-scale study carried out between 2011 and 2016, made possible by funding from the National Research Foundation. It has spawned many research articles, books and PhD studies (see Appendix One) and has thus in itself provided a vehicle for the development of further research and researchers on the subject. The team chose to work collaboratively, with all the possibilities and difficulties that that entails, as reflected on in Chapter 7. Thereby, it also offers an illuminating reflection and insights into such research methodology. While the report does not specifically set out to offer anything new or surprising about the cultural and contextual differences between institutions, it does offer a coherent interpretation of such complex and intersecting conditions examined through a single theoretical lens. Indeed, the concepts of ‘structure, culture and agency’ as developed in the work of the social realist, Margaret Archer, formed the theoretical canvas for the study. The theory allows for the analytical separation of different domains for the purposes of understanding the interplay of relations, but it also offers a hope of bringing about social transformation through exercising particular modes of reflexivity. As the report argues, quoting Archer, transforming our positions in society is possible, but “their transformation depends partly on the subjective reflexivity of primary agents in seeking to play an active part in reshaping society’s resource distribution”. The researchers may not always have found it easy to apply a single theoretical lens, but the theory based study provides a coherent representation of the differences and similarities between the institutional contexts of the eight universities, throwing into relief their different influences on professional learning, and points to pathways towards the improvement of teaching and learning in South African higher education. A major contribution of this report that is likely to influence the discourse on teaching and learning significantly, is the conceptual shift from ‘professional development’ to ‘professional learning’. As an external reviewer noted, “in the context of the decolonization debate, [this shift] has the potential to offer a more flexible continuum in which to position different learning opportunities”. It also recognises the importance of group and individual agency and the importance of informal contexts in learning to teach. 12 | Monitor 14 | Learning to Teach in Higher Education in South Africa The publication of this research report takes forward the CHE’s ongoing endeavours to improve and enhance the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. It serves to complement the more practical implementation of quality assurance in higher education, which for the CHE has largely entailed a focus on teaching and learning, whether in accreditation, audits or the Quality Enhancement Project (QEP) that began in 2014 in which one of the four focus areas that universities were asked to engage with was “enhancing academics as teachers”. Participation in the QEP over the past three years has contributed to a heightened awareness across the sector of the importance of academics developing competence in university teaching, particularly given the increased emphasis being placed on student success by both the government and higher education institutions themselves. As a result, universities are becoming more intentional in their efforts to help academics develop this competence. The release of the study is therefore timely, as not only will it add to our collective understanding of the complexities and nuances in the interrelationships between structure, culture and agency that inform and influence academics in their roles as teachers, but it will serve as a useful resource for institutions in their efforts to enhance university teachers and teaching. The Higher Education Monitor series, as was elaborated in the first issue in 2003, “aims to stimulate research and the production of knowledge and interpretive frameworks that could contribute to better theorisation of higher education, more rigorous analysis of higher education complexities and more effective strategies for change and progress”. It is our hope that this report will do exactly that. , We thank the National Research Foundation for funding the project that made the study and the ensuing report possible, Professor Brenda Leibowitz for leading the team of researchers, our external reviewers, and the individual authors who took the time to present drafts of their chapters to Dr Webbstock of the CHE at a workshop in May 2016.
- Full Text:
Media and citizenship: between marginalisation and participation
- Authors: Garman, Anthea , Wasserman, Herman
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158383 , vital:40179 , ISBN 9780796925565
- Description: How central are the media to the functioning of democracy? Is democracy primarily about citizens using their vote? Does the expression of their voice necessarily empower citizens? Media and Citizenship challenges some assumptions about the relationship between the media and democracy in highly unequal societies like South Africa. In a post-apartheid society where an enfranchised majority is still unable to fundamentally practice their citizenship and experiences marginalization on a daily basis, notions like listening and belonging may be more useful ways of thinking about the role of the media. In this context, protest is taken seriously as a form of political expression and the media's role is foregrounded as actively seeking out the voices of those on the margins of society. Through a range of case studies, the contributors show how listening, both as a political concept and as a form of practice, has transformative and even radical potential for both emerging and established democracies.
- Full Text:
Study South Africa
- Authors: International Education Association of South Africa (IEASA) , Quinlan, Orla
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education and globalization -- South Africa Student mobility -- Africa International education -- South Africa Education, Higher -- International cooperation , Universities and colleges -- South Africa , Technical Institutes -- South Africa , Vocational guidance -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/64853 , vital:28620 , ISBN 9780620769662
- Description: [Editor's Letter]: Welcome to the seventeenth Study SA, compiled as IEASA celebrates its twentieth anniversary. Study SA is the South African publication that provides an overview of South African Higher Education issues and developments. This edition has a special Commemorative section, celebrating 20 years of IEASA, as well as the standard sections found in every issue of Study SA, consisting of Higher Education in Context, Features and Medical Aid and the updated profiles of the 26 public Higher Education Institutions. Universities South Africa, USAF, kindly provided partial funding for this edition of Study SA and we are delighted to include a message from the current CEO Dr Ahmed Bawa, a consistent supporter of internationalisation in Higher Education. We also have a message from the former Minister of Higher Education, Dr Blade Nzimande (2009-2017). A voluntary organisation supported by a small secretariat, IEASA is testament to a group of people who saw the need for an organisation to support the South African Higher Education’s re-entry and engagement with the rest of the world, once it became a democracy in 1994. This edition includes articles by two of the founding members: lEASA’s first President, Dr Roshun Kishun and its first Treasurer, Dr Derek Swemmer. Our sincere thanks to all the committed individuals in South African Higher education, who have kept IEASA going from strength to strength. Thilor Manikam, lEASA’s longest serving staffing member and the Office Manager has provided continuity and institutional memory over the best part of the twenty years. Guided by lEASA’s Constitution, Thilor has ensured that regardless of the change in the Management Council over the years, IEASA operations are impeccably managed and that IEASA has received an unqualified audit every year since its inception. In its history, IEASA has had seven Presidents: Dr Roshun Kishan, Ms Fazela Hanif, Mr David Ferrai, Ms Merle Hodges, Mr Lavern Samuels, Dr Nico Jooste and the current President Leolyn Jackson, whose term will run until the end of 2018, when the current President Elect, Ms Orla Quinlan will serve a two-year term from 2019-2020. IEASA has facilitated the development of a close knit community of practice in South Africa with members drawing on each other’s strengths and skills; inviting each other to our respective institutions to share knowledge, skills and ideas on appropriate internationalisation, within the South African context. More than that, we have become friends and have developed a collective responsibility to present and represent South African Higher Education to the rest of the world. Sadly, we lost three of our very dear colleagues and friends in recent years: Mr Len Mkhize, Mr Jimmy Ellis and Professor Stan Ridge. We pay tribute to the energy and joy they brought to IEASA in all their endeavours. They are missed. Others who have supported IEASA over the years include PWC, who have provided free audit services up to 2017, as a contribution to South Africa’s Higher Education; ABSA and the Medical Aid companies, who have provided sponsorship to IEASA. Finally, its volunteer Management Council, members of which serve two-year terms, with the possibility of being re-elected, and each one of our members who participate in and support IEASA activities and events. IEASA continued its work with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) to clarify the visa application procedures, communicate the processes and to request interventions when visa processing is unduly delayed or if there are extenuating circumstances, which require intervention. IEASA and DHA have held one joint workshop with universities in 2016; a second was held following the IEASA 20th conference in August 2017 and an initial meeting called by USAF was held with DHA, HR Directors from universities and IEASA in late 2017. Visa Facilitation Services (VFS) have introduced a new mobile biometric service for campuses who do not have a VFS office in their locality. IEASA will continue to work on behalf of the international students and the rest of the international Higher Education community to improve the clarity of immigration requirements and to help overcome any difficulties faced. An article providing an update on progress is included in this edition. The international landscape has shifted enormously in recent years, where previously unquestioned democratic principles are being contested in some of the world’s most established democracies. lEASA’s 20th Anniversary Conference theme was “Advancing internationalisation: overcoming hostilities and building communities”. While in reflective and celebratory mode about the achievements of the last twenty years during the the Colloquium, the conference attendees switched mode and engaged in robust debates, about the current challenges in Higher Education including economic and financial challenges, xenophobia, the lack of equity in existing partnerships, institutional strategies, opportunities for engaging with partners interested in South African Higher Education. IEASA is cognisant of its responsibility to build capacity for the upcoming professionals in the sector and workshops on themes pertinent to the professionals in International Offices included immigration, partnerships and developing internationalisation strategy. , 17th Edition
- Full Text: