Professor Derek Attridge FBA

Derek Attridge has published 30 books as author or editor, in four main areas: literary theory, the history and forms of Western poetry, modernist fiction, and South African literature. He serves on 20 editorial boards across these fields. He was awarded the inaugural Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Prize in 1999, and his book The Singularity of Literature received the 2006 European Society for the Study of English Prize for literary studies. Among his other awards have been a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Leverhulme Research Professorship, and a Senior Fellowship at the National Humanities Center. Having gained a BA at the University of Natal, he came to the UK in 1966 to complete further degrees at Cambridge. After a Research Lectureship at Christ Church, Oxford, he taught at the University of Southampton, then moved to a Chair of English Studies at Strathclyde University. In 1988, he took up a Professorship at Rutgers University, returning to the UK in 1998 to join the University of York's Department of English and Related Literature, from which he is now Emeritus Professor. He has held visiting positions at a number of universities, including Oxford, Cape Town, Orleans, Paris VII, Sassari, Northwestern, Queensland, Alliance (Bangalore) and the American University of Cairo.