If you like the idea of listening to the likes of William Kentridge or Imraan Coovadia discussing some of life’s big questions, then the Great Texts/Big Questions public lecture series is for you.

The Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) will host the second series of the popular Great Texts/Big Questions lectures from March 2010. The public lectures, which were a great success last year, asked inspiring speakers to discuss one of life’s big questions, or the personal significance of a particular book or artwork.

“The big question is how the media is shifting the terms of democracy in America and elsewhere,” said Herwitz, who is Director of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan and is currently Mellon Visiting Research Fellow at UCT.

These free hour-long lectures are open to the public, UCT staff and students. They start at 17h00 on Thursdays in Hiddingh Hall, at UCT’s Hiddingh Campus, Orange Street, in the heart of Cape Town’s CBD.

The 2010 Great Texts / Big Questions series promises to deliver an equally high standard of opinion and debate. For more information on dates and speakers call Niek de Greef on (021) 480 7156 or e-mail niek.degreef@uct.ac.za.

Some of the forthcoming speakers and topics include:

• 4 March – Daniel Herwitz on ‘Talk Show Democracy: Stars, Celebrities and American Politics’
• 11 March – RoseLee Goldberg – American performance art historian, critic and curator
• 1 April – Imraan Coovadia, novelist and English lecturer on ‘How to read Lolita’
• 8 April – world-acclaimed artist William Kentridge
• 15 April – Linguist Rajend Mesthrie on ‘Syntactic structures: Noam Chomsky and the colourless green revolution in language studies’
• 22 April – Ian Glenn, Professor of Media Studies on ‘François Le Vaillant and the great South African text’
• 12 August – Deborah Posel, Director of UCT’s Institute for Humanities in Africa
• 26 August – Coilin Parsons, English lecturer, on ‘James Joyce’s Shorter Masterpiece: The Dead’

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