Mind Altering Books Seminar 2022

The fourth annual Mind Altering Books Seminar took place on the 26th of September 2022, fully-booked with an audience eager to listen to the four speakers talk about the way in which particular books contributed to shaping their lives and identities. Scholars usually consider books critically in their professional capacity, but this event focuses instead on the personal experience of literature and its transformative power.

The Mind Altering Books Seminar is hosted by the Department of Library Services and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, and in particular by librarian Adrienne Warwicker, behind the scenes, and head of the English Department Professor Molly Brown, who expertly curates and chairs the event.

Professor Thulasiwe Simpson was the first speaker, with a look at his favourite book, The Writings of William James edited by John. J. MacDermott. Professor Simpson argued passionately that James’ writing was not only beneficial to historians like himself, but to all scholars of the human sciences. The book shaped his own research to the extent that Simpson considers himself a Jamesian pragmatist, and he hopes that William James would consider him worthy of the title.

Professor Marie-Heleen Coetzee introduced Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff, as a book that had an outsize impact on her work in applied theatre. The novel focuses on a Māori family in New Zealand that is marked by trauma, both in the public and domestic spheres. The book challenged Professor Coetzee to examine the ways in which violence is portrayed, in this novel and in others, and the way in which readers, writers and performers might be complicit in its perpetuation.

Mr Jarred Thompson talked about a poetry collection, Life on Mars by Tracy. K. Smith, that he stumbled across in a bookstore in New Orleans. Surprisingly, this is the first time a collection of poetry has been included in the seminar. As Thompson showed, through his reading of several of her poems, how Tracy. K. Smith uses poetry about the vast universe to portray small and intimate aspects of ordinary human life. Thompson concludes that the collection shows that it is not life on mars that is strange, instead life on earth is what is inexplicable and confusing.

Dr Idette Noomé told her audience about her favourite novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Written almost a century ago in 1932, Dr Noomé claims that Brave New World comes the closest to accurately predicting what the future has turned out to be, in its representation of a hedonistic society that mimics today’s consumerist culture. The book made her think about many things in new ways, and as she re-reads the novel it continues to take on new meanings. 

The seminar was lively and informative, and sparked a renewed appreciation for the many books that have shaped all of our lives.