Summer Surfing History
TUesday 19 January 2016 Don't forget our resident surf doctor Glen Thompson's three-part lecture that unearths a wider history of surfing in South Africa. His lectures start tomorrow at the UCT summer school. See you there.
MAKING WAVES: A SOCIO-CULTURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICAN SURFING,
is presented by Dr Glen Thompson, research associate, History Department, Stellenbosch University
Surfing in South Africa has been, and still is, perceived to be a white, male sporting lifestyle that pursues pleasure and eschews politics. Whilst these cultural myths have been perpetuated through the surfing cultural industry, below the surface a more nuanced past can be found.
This three-lecture course will show that surfing’s hidden history includes black and female surfers. It will also discuss the political history of surfing that saw the formation of a non-racial surfing association, the boycott of South African surfing by international amateur and professional surfers during the apartheid years and the transformation of surfing in a democratic country.
Surfing magazines and surf films provide useful historical sources for charting surfing’s past, its changing cultural politics and the shifting image of the surfer. This raises questions about the commodification and consumption of the surfing lifestyle, the gendered nature of surfing in the media and South African surfing’s place within global surfing culture. The course will elucidate these questions.
LECTURE TITLES
1. From fremlins to saltwater girls: a history of women’s surfing in South Africa, 1965–present
2. From Offshore to African soul surfer: the cultural politics of surfing in South Africa, 1987–1996
3. Waves of change: new directions in South African surfing since 1990
Recommended Reading
Laderman, S. 2014. The Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Pike, S. 2007. Surfing in South Africa. Cape Town: Double Storey.
Thompson, G. ‘Otelo Burning and Zulu Surfing Histories’. Journal of African Cultural Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3. 2014.
Date: Wednesday 20–Friday 22 January
Time: 7.30 pm
COURSE FEES
Full: R252,00 Staff: R126,00 Reduced: R63,00
- See more at:http://www.summerschool.uct.ac.za/history_of_surfing