Welcome to the Department of English. My name is Riaan,
but my friends and my dog call me Dr. Riaan Oppelt. And today, I will briefly be informing you
about the ways and whys of studying English at Stellenbosch University.
Although English is listed as a language component to most degree programmes at Stellenbosch,
and of course it very much is a language, our branch is literary studies.
At this point someone, sometimes me, says, "Oh, you mean like Shakespeare".
Yes, yes, we mean like Shakespeare. But we also mean like Toni Morrison, JRR Tolkien,
Franz Fanon, Harry Potter, The Avengers, Blackish, Grownish, Bridgerton, Fight Club, Star Wars,
Parasite, Beyoncé, Miriam Makeba, Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, Nina Simone, Prince, Coldplay
(no, wait, never Coldplay), Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Elliott Page, LeBron James, and of course,
the history-altering disastrous pandemic of our times, Donald Trump. I mean, COVID-19.
What do these names and titles have in common? They are elements of culture and cultural studies.
Things people talk about, things some of you talk about. Do we teach this content?
Not exactly, but we rely on you knowing what it's all about. So that you bring your knowledge of how
culture works to the content we do teach. How you read, interpret and understand your favourite film
may not be different to how you analyse a novel. How you listen to a particular jazz song and
innately understand its stories and complexities, is not too different from how you may approach a
poem you study in class. You bring your own participation in the cultural world with you
to an English class, and between you and the content we teach, something happens.
Something always does.
Yes. All this is fine. But what then is English at Stellenbosch all about?
What do I mean when I say there is a vocabulary to English. Duh, Shakespeare. Is it all about him?
It's all about him, isn't it? What does one do with English? Let's find out.
English Studies prioritises getting at the story of something or someone. All the world is a story.
It is the story of many and the dream of some. We are typically presented with a text – a book
or a film perhaps – and that text has context. Sometimes the context of its own moment in time,
or sometimes the context of the very moment in which you are reading it in the here and now.
Connecting the dots between the inner world of the text, the world that text was produced in,
and the world in which you are reading that text is a game we play in English.
A game we cannot stop playing because it becomes instinct. Every person on earth
has a story, and every person is a text. So we never really stopped reading.
Some of the keywords we use in English, I've used a few times already:
text, analysis, and storytelling. If you are an Avengers fan, and you have interesting theories
and some of the characters, then you are engaging with the text by analysing what it gives you,
and synthesising that with what you think it could connect to outside of the text.
In doing so, you are providing a new idea which could be a new story and also providing yourself
as something of a story. The parts of you that are in this new idea are also a story.
Yes, just yes. Obviously, we focus on more than only Shakespeare.
He is cool and there is still plenty we can learn from his works. We're also
conspiracy theory believers with definite proof of the links between 5G, COVID, and something
else a guy named Frikkadel told you at a braai. So we also know that Shakespeare never existed.
All his plays were written by Olaf from Frozen. Yeah, you know.
What can one do with English, other than make bad jokes?
Well, firstly, you will improve as a critical thinker, as you would in any other university
subject, but with us, you improve as a critical thinker while always prioritising the story.
You'd be a good journalist.
You will master literary analysis, and tell people at parties exactly what, "to be or not to be" means.
Most importantly, you'd be a writer of fiction, essays, articles, theses, books
or you'd be a teacher or lecturer, or you'd work in publishing or most importantly in editing.
Any writer needs an editor. Imagine if you were the one to correct Stephen King's typos.
No one else but you would know what a legend you are, living in a mansion paid for by the
errors of others, like a celebrity lawyer winning hashtag cases in Twitter court.
Finally, getting at stories within stories is what we do. The news,
history, politics, these all say things, but we come in and look at how the things are said
and what it is that irritates, and agitates a story, a bad rash if you will.
And like your cousin forever borrowing your money and breaking your stuff,
what irritates and agitates is people, always people. They annoy us and they also soothe us,
because as a people yourself, you know, there's always more to the story.
And with this, I say goodbye and I hope you think on English, even if not in English.
I hope you enjoy the choices you have to make. See you soon. Goodbye.