Ian Glenn
Biographic Data
| ID | 256237 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ian Glenn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ian |
| FAMILY NAME | Glenn |
| SIGNATURE | GLENN I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0893-3118 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The ethics of wildlife documentary making in Africa: Fréderic Rossif’s La Fête Sauvage and the school of lies
Critiques of faked sequences in wildlife documentary films have generally ignored films made in Africa. While recent revelations show how David Attenborough and others have misled audiences, the most shocking example is Frédéric Rossif’s film La Fête Sauvage (1976). Though the film remains notable for many reasons – dramatic aerial sequences, lyrical use of ultra-slow motion, technical innovations, the music of Vangelis – from the perspective of …
Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage
Looted treasures? Black Panther and King Solomon’s Mines
This article argues that Rider Haggard’s 1885 novel King Solomon’s Mines and filmed versions of it were a major influence on Ryan Coogler’s 2018 hit film Black Panther. It examines ways in which the modern film in reversing some of the plot and colonial tropes of the original nonetheless remains indebted to it and that this source helps explain some of the weaknesses and inconsistencies of the plot of Black Panther
The Kruger Park and Jacob Dlamini’s Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park
This review article analyses Jacob Dlamini’s 2020 publication Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park and argues that it provides a valuable and complex account of different ways in which black South Africans have interacted with the Kruger and corrects many earlier simplifications and misconceptions. After probing Dlamini’s analysis of the 2001 fire in Kruger that killed 25 workers and the attempt to use African field guides …
Journalism, the Coming of Television, and the New South Africa
In June 2006, I saw somebody with an interesting name tag at the International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Dresden. “Are you the Elihu Katz?” I asked and he replied, without missi
Fake news’ or trust in authorities? The problems of uncertainty at a time of medical crisis
This article examines the complex boundaries between ‘fake news’, speculation, hypothesis, gossip and whistleblowing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows that apparently authoritative sources and experts gave information or policy recommendations that have turned out to be wrong, sometimes dangerously so, and explores the kinds of bias that enter medical advice and planning decisions. The article then diagnoses a WhatsApp voice-note from a youn…
Conservation propaganda in South Africa? The case of Laurens van der Post, the Department of Information and the National Parks Board
This article examines correspondence in the archives of the South African National Parks relating to a television film, “All Africa within us”, that Sir Laurens van der Post made for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in various South African nature reserves in 1974. The correspondence reveals that The South African Department of Information, supported by Dr Piet Koornhof, who was friendly with Van der Post, helped arrange the visit, expe…
The Original Scene of Anthropology: Levaillant's Illustrations of Visiting the Gonaqua
François Levaillant (also Le Vaillant, born Vaillant) was the most influential early traveler to South Africa. His narrative illustrations of his travels, however, have not been widely studied, in part because many were not published in his travel books. Levaillant’s role as a founding figure of African anthropology has received increased attention, but illustrations of his first visit to the Gonaqua deserve greater scrutiny, in part because they…
J. M. Coetzee and the English Department at the University of Cape Town
J. M. Coetzee’s activities lecturing English in the University of Cape Town have received relatively little examination. Drawing on unpublished letters to and from Coetzee, this article examines the reasons for his criticism of the English Department during the 1970s and 1980s. It suggests that the reasons for Coetzee’s dissatisfaction stemmed in part from his background in the American academy as the values of intellectual ferment, diversity, an…
The trials of the centuries: Murder and the media in South Africa
Several important critical perspectives on media coverage of the Pistorius trial emerge in comparison to the most famous murder trial in South Africa in the first half of the twentieth century. In both cases, a well-known sports star shoots a young woman under circumstances that cause speculation and conjecture. The trials led to huge public interest and crowded courtrooms. While there are many points of comparison between the cases, in this arti…
Eighteenth-century natural history, travel writing and South African literary historiography
Travel writing in South Africa in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a highly self-conscious genre, aimed at the European elite, and closely linked to the leading intellectual and political movements of its time. Its major protagonists came from a variety of countries and many were major figures in scientific discovery. The German Peter Kolb(e)(n) (1675–1725/6) and Frenchman Nicholas Louis de La Caille (Delacaille, de la Caille, De…
The Cambridge History of South African Literature
South Africa's unique history has produced literatures in many languages, in both oral and written forms, reflecting the diversity in the cultural histories and experiences of its people. The Cambridge History offers a comprehensive, multi-authored history of South African literature in all eleven official languages (and more minor ones) of the country, produced by a team of over forty international experts, including contributors from all of the…
The lost Bourdieu interview
Introduction I spent a sabbatical in France from July 1980 to June 1981. On 22 June 1981, shortly before leaving France, I interviewed Pierre Bourdieu in his office in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in the Boulevard Raspail. I think it was somebody at EHESS who arranged this--probably Marie-France Toinet. I do remember Bourdieu and his manner very strongly. I was struck by the intensity of his reflection and the surprising warmth and intellectual op…
TIA—This is Africa”: Afropessimism in Twenty-First-Century Narrative Film
This paper considers new representations of postcolonial Africa via five big-budget narrative films, including Hotel Rwanda (2004), The Constant Gardener (2005), The Interpreter (2005), Blood Diamond (2006), and The Last King of Scotland (2006). Although these films appear to have transcended old colonial stereotypes, a new set of features and themes, all Afropessimist in nature, links them, suggesting the West’s negative influence on perceptions…
Cryptic Rhetoric: The ANC and Anti-Americanization
South Africans live in a country that is rich in political contradictions, paradoxes and ambivalences. We have a communist party in government; yet a bitter public service sector strike lasted for almost the whole month of June 2007. Avowed socialists and social democrats, in government with the Communists, have embraced neoliberal economic orthodoxy and the disciplines of the market. A former ANC Communist Party leader and candidate for the ANC …
Douglas Livingstone's two cultures
This article, a collaboration between a literary scholar and a scientist, examines Livingstone's poetry to see how his scientific views affected his later poetry and, in particular, a mystical sense of nature. We suggest that Livingstone moves from the earlier idealism of the scientist as hunter and destroyer of evil or the even earlier sense of man as male‐master of nature or helpless observer of it, to his microscopic “prying” open of the origi…
Primate Time: Rousseau, Levaillant, Marais
Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, drawing on accounts of the Cape, shaped arguments and discourses about animal and human nature in the nascent disciplines of ethology and anthropology. This paper examines how the discourses of ethology and anthropology mesh and separate in South Africa by looking at two of the most important early South African writers on primates: late eighteenth century French explorer François Levaillant and early twentieth century Afri…
Begging, borrowing, stealing: The context for media plagiarism in twenty-first century South Africa
This article argues that the media plagiarism scandals in South Africa in 2003 reveal and reflect larger shifts in media behaviour. Structural changes to media employment in the new South Africa and the resulting pressures on writers have contributed to the problems. The article considers problematic areas: the unacknowledged reuse of international material with slight alterations in the local market; whether writers can plagiarise their own work…
On (not) teaching journalism: The experience of UCT
The University of Cape Town established a major in Media & Writing in 2002 and a Centre for Film and Media Studies in 2003. Currently the centre takes responsibility for two majors (Film Studies and Media & Writing) and five streams within an undergraduate Film and Media Production Programme: in print production; film and television production; multi-media production; scriptwriting; and radio (from 2005). It also has nominal control of the MFA an…
Media in Iraq: Wagging which dog
The minister's observation could, according to one's theoretical persuasion, be taken either as the defining moment of globalisation, or a devastating expose of the shortcomings of high theory in the face of a mobile army
Legislating women
This article scrutinises literary texts by white women explicitly or implicitly calling for legislation to prevent miscegenation and, in particular, to prohibit sexual relationships between white men and women of colour. It maintains that, from Schreiner onwards, this theme recurs in a number of writers and examines how it affects the writers’ portrayals of male psychology, of incest, of writing and the world of culture. The article continues by …
Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, and the Politics of Interpretation
Research Article| January 01 1994 Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, and the Politics of Interpretation Ian Glenn Ian Glenn Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1994) 93 (1): 11–32. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-93-1-11 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ian Glenn; Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, and the Politics of Interpretation. South…
Literary studies in the university
Most problems facing literary studies in South Africa are not remediable by ideological or theoretical means. This polemic focuses on underlying structural problems: the canon; the linguistic bases of literature studies; postgraduate studies and career tracks; particular problems caused by our South African situation; and concludes with several practical recommendations for literary studies in South Africa
University and Literature in South Africa: Who Produces Symbolic Value
Towards a sociology of South African literature
Les Guetteurs de L'Aube: Poesie et Apartheid by Jacques Alvarez‐Pereyre. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble 1979. South African Literature: An Introduction by Stephen Gray. Cape Town: David Philip 1979
TIA—This is Africa”: Afropessimism in Twenty-First-Century Narrative Film
This paper considers new representations of postcolonial Africa via five big-budget narrative films, including Hotel Rwanda (2004), The Constant Gardener (2005), The Interpreter (2005), Blood Diamond (2006), and The Last King of Scotland (2006). Although these films appear to have transcended old colonial stereotypes, a new set of features and themes, all Afropessimist in nature, links them, suggesting the West’s negative influence on perceptions…
The lost Bourdieu interview
Introduction I spent a sabbatical in France from July 1980 to June 1981. On 22 June 1981, shortly before leaving France, I interviewed Pierre Bourdieu in his office in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in the Boulevard Raspail. I think it was somebody at EHESS who arranged this--probably Marie-France Toinet. I do remember Bourdieu and his manner very strongly. I was struck by the intensity of his reflection and the surprising warmth and intellectual op…
J. M. Coetzee and the English Department at the University of Cape Town
J. M. Coetzee’s activities lecturing English in the University of Cape Town have received relatively little examination. Drawing on unpublished letters to and from Coetzee, this article examines the reasons for his criticism of the English Department during the 1970s and 1980s. It suggests that the reasons for Coetzee’s dissatisfaction stemmed in part from his background in the American academy as the values of intellectual ferment, diversity, an…
Towards a sociology of South African literature
Les Guetteurs de L'Aube: Poesie et Apartheid by Jacques Alvarez‐Pereyre. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble 1979. South African Literature: An Introduction by Stephen Gray. Cape Town: David Philip 1979
University and Literature in South Africa: Who Produces Symbolic Value
Literary studies in the university
Most problems facing literary studies in South Africa are not remediable by ideological or theoretical means. This polemic focuses on underlying structural problems: the canon; the linguistic bases of literature studies; postgraduate studies and career tracks; particular problems caused by our South African situation; and concludes with several practical recommendations for literary studies in South Africa
Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, and the Politics of Interpretation
Research Article| January 01 1994 Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, and the Politics of Interpretation Ian Glenn Ian Glenn Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1994) 93 (1): 11–32. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-93-1-11 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ian Glenn; Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, and the Politics of Interpretation. South…
Legislating women
This article scrutinises literary texts by white women explicitly or implicitly calling for legislation to prevent miscegenation and, in particular, to prohibit sexual relationships between white men and women of colour. It maintains that, from Schreiner onwards, this theme recurs in a number of writers and examines how it affects the writers’ portrayals of male psychology, of incest, of writing and the world of culture. The article continues by …
Media in Iraq: Wagging which dog
The minister's observation could, according to one's theoretical persuasion, be taken either as the defining moment of globalisation, or a devastating expose of the shortcomings of high theory in the face of a mobile army
On (not) teaching journalism: The experience of UCT
The University of Cape Town established a major in Media & Writing in 2002 and a Centre for Film and Media Studies in 2003. Currently the centre takes responsibility for two majors (Film Studies and Media & Writing) and five streams within an undergraduate Film and Media Production Programme: in print production; film and television production; multi-media production; scriptwriting; and radio (from 2005). It also has nominal control of the MFA an…
Douglas Livingstone's two cultures
This article, a collaboration between a literary scholar and a scientist, examines Livingstone's poetry to see how his scientific views affected his later poetry and, in particular, a mystical sense of nature. We suggest that Livingstone moves from the earlier idealism of the scientist as hunter and destroyer of evil or the even earlier sense of man as male‐master of nature or helpless observer of it, to his microscopic “prying” open of the origi…
Primate Time: Rousseau, Levaillant, Marais
Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, drawing on accounts of the Cape, shaped arguments and discourses about animal and human nature in the nascent disciplines of ethology and anthropology. This paper examines how the discourses of ethology and anthropology mesh and separate in South Africa by looking at two of the most important early South African writers on primates: late eighteenth century French explorer François Levaillant and early twentieth century Afri…
Begging, borrowing, stealing: The context for media plagiarism in twenty-first century South Africa
This article argues that the media plagiarism scandals in South Africa in 2003 reveal and reflect larger shifts in media behaviour. Structural changes to media employment in the new South Africa and the resulting pressures on writers have contributed to the problems. The article considers problematic areas: the unacknowledged reuse of international material with slight alterations in the local market; whether writers can plagiarise their own work…
Cryptic Rhetoric: The ANC and Anti-Americanization
South Africans live in a country that is rich in political contradictions, paradoxes and ambivalences. We have a communist party in government; yet a bitter public service sector strike lasted for almost the whole month of June 2007. Avowed socialists and social democrats, in government with the Communists, have embraced neoliberal economic orthodoxy and the disciplines of the market. A former ANC Communist Party leader and candidate for the ANC …
The lost Bourdieu interview
Introduction I spent a sabbatical in France from July 1980 to June 1981. On 22 June 1981, shortly before leaving France, I interviewed Pierre Bourdieu in his office in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in the Boulevard Raspail. I think it was somebody at EHESS who arranged this--probably Marie-France Toinet. I do remember Bourdieu and his manner very strongly. I was struck by the intensity of his reflection and the surprising warmth and intellectual op…
TIA—This is Africa”: Afropessimism in Twenty-First-Century Narrative Film
This paper considers new representations of postcolonial Africa via five big-budget narrative films, including Hotel Rwanda (2004), The Constant Gardener (2005), The Interpreter (2005), Blood Diamond (2006), and The Last King of Scotland (2006). Although these films appear to have transcended old colonial stereotypes, a new set of features and themes, all Afropessimist in nature, links them, suggesting the West’s negative influence on perceptions…
Eighteenth-century natural history, travel writing and South African literary historiography
Travel writing in South Africa in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a highly self-conscious genre, aimed at the European elite, and closely linked to the leading intellectual and political movements of its time. Its major protagonists came from a variety of countries and many were major figures in scientific discovery. The German Peter Kolb(e)(n) (1675–1725/6) and Frenchman Nicholas Louis de La Caille (Delacaille, de la Caille, De…
The Cambridge History of South African Literature
South Africa's unique history has produced literatures in many languages, in both oral and written forms, reflecting the diversity in the cultural histories and experiences of its people. The Cambridge History offers a comprehensive, multi-authored history of South African literature in all eleven official languages (and more minor ones) of the country, produced by a team of over forty international experts, including contributors from all of the…
The trials of the centuries: Murder and the media in South Africa
Several important critical perspectives on media coverage of the Pistorius trial emerge in comparison to the most famous murder trial in South Africa in the first half of the twentieth century. In both cases, a well-known sports star shoots a young woman under circumstances that cause speculation and conjecture. The trials led to huge public interest and crowded courtrooms. While there are many points of comparison between the cases, in this arti…
J. M. Coetzee and the English Department at the University of Cape Town
J. M. Coetzee’s activities lecturing English in the University of Cape Town have received relatively little examination. Drawing on unpublished letters to and from Coetzee, this article examines the reasons for his criticism of the English Department during the 1970s and 1980s. It suggests that the reasons for Coetzee’s dissatisfaction stemmed in part from his background in the American academy as the values of intellectual ferment, diversity, an…
Conservation propaganda in South Africa? The case of Laurens van der Post, the Department of Information and the National Parks Board
This article examines correspondence in the archives of the South African National Parks relating to a television film, “All Africa within us”, that Sir Laurens van der Post made for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in various South African nature reserves in 1974. The correspondence reveals that The South African Department of Information, supported by Dr Piet Koornhof, who was friendly with Van der Post, helped arrange the visit, expe…
The Original Scene of Anthropology: Levaillant's Illustrations of Visiting the Gonaqua
François Levaillant (also Le Vaillant, born Vaillant) was the most influential early traveler to South Africa. His narrative illustrations of his travels, however, have not been widely studied, in part because many were not published in his travel books. Levaillant’s role as a founding figure of African anthropology has received increased attention, but illustrations of his first visit to the Gonaqua deserve greater scrutiny, in part because they…
Looted treasures? Black Panther and King Solomon’s Mines
This article argues that Rider Haggard’s 1885 novel King Solomon’s Mines and filmed versions of it were a major influence on Ryan Coogler’s 2018 hit film Black Panther. It examines ways in which the modern film in reversing some of the plot and colonial tropes of the original nonetheless remains indebted to it and that this source helps explain some of the weaknesses and inconsistencies of the plot of Black Panther
The Kruger Park and Jacob Dlamini’s Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park
This review article analyses Jacob Dlamini’s 2020 publication Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park and argues that it provides a valuable and complex account of different ways in which black South Africans have interacted with the Kruger and corrects many earlier simplifications and misconceptions. After probing Dlamini’s analysis of the 2001 fire in Kruger that killed 25 workers and the attempt to use African field guides …
Journalism, the Coming of Television, and the New South Africa
In June 2006, I saw somebody with an interesting name tag at the International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Dresden. “Are you the Elihu Katz?” I asked and he replied, without missi
Fake news’ or trust in authorities? The problems of uncertainty at a time of medical crisis
This article examines the complex boundaries between ‘fake news’, speculation, hypothesis, gossip and whistleblowing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows that apparently authoritative sources and experts gave information or policy recommendations that have turned out to be wrong, sometimes dangerously so, and explores the kinds of bias that enter medical advice and planning decisions. The article then diagnoses a WhatsApp voice-note from a youn…
The ethics of wildlife documentary making in Africa: Fréderic Rossif’s La Fête Sauvage and the school of lies
Critiques of faked sequences in wildlife documentary films have generally ignored films made in Africa. While recent revelations show how David Attenborough and others have misled audiences, the most shocking example is Frédéric Rossif’s film La Fête Sauvage (1976). Though the film remains notable for many reasons – dramatic aerial sequences, lyrical use of ultra-slow motion, technical innovations, the music of Vangelis – from the perspective of …
Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage
Sociology (18 works) · History (14 works) · Art (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Media studies (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Literature (9 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · South African History and Culture (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works)