About Us

The Coetzee Collective started out as an informal discussion group after a visit by David Attwell to the English Department at the University of Cape Town in August 2006. David presented a paper on Coetzee, which led to a follow-up conversation in a second seminar. It became clear to all of us that there was much more to say than there was time to hear. What we needed was a space for serious and sustained debate about Coetzee's work.

In the next few years at UCT we hosted speakers and participants from many parts of the world: the UK (including the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield, York, Oxford, Royal Holloway, London and Northumbria); Canada (Brock University), Europe (Berlin, Humboldt, Oslo, la Sorbonne, Cordoba …), the United States (Illinois State, NYU, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Rutgers …), and Asia (National Taiwan University). The field of “Coetzee Studies” has become a flourishing interdisciplinary zone—speaking across from literary studies to Philosophy, Law, Postcolonial and Cultural Studies, Linguistics, Film and Media, Psychology, Education, Critical Theory, and other fields too.

The Coetzee Collective has now moved online, and we have a lively Facebook group too. We are recognized as the international network of Coetzee scholars. It’s fun to be part of those initial encounters and exchanges that develop into essays, and dissertations, and journal articles—and even books!