Mark Williams (writer): Difference between revisions
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Mark Williams (born 1951) MA (Auckland), Ph.D (1983) (British Colombia) a New Zealand writer, academic critic and editor of contemporary New Zealand literature. He Assocate Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington.
He was educated at St Peter's College Auckland. Williams has written about his reaction to St Peter's after his Christadelphian background. "To me, on coming from a radically iconoclastic Protestant sect, the holy pictures and statues the Christian Brothers had crammed on every wall seemed utterly bizarre". "At midday we all knelt for the Angelus. Mass involved long periods of kneeling". Although he feels he escaped "the deep imprinting on the psyche of Catholic guilt", Williams was captivated by "those gothic images and rigid doctrines". "An absolute scale of values and vision is insinuated into one's mind" which may account "for the number of Catholics who become writers or artists".[1] While at St Peter's College, Williams started writing poetry and while there he entered a poetry contest judged by old boy poet Sam Hunt who wrote to him in reponse to his entry.[2]
Academic career
Williams returned to New Zealand from his doctoral studies in British Columbia (1983) and lectures at Auckland University and Waikato University before moving to the University of Canterbury where he was a lecturer and associate professor. He became Associate Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington in 2008. [3] William's research focuses on New Zealand and modern literature. He is on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals, including Journal of Commonwealth Literature and Canadian Literature. Wiht others he is currently engaged in the editing of The World Novel to 1950, a volume of Oxford University Press series, The History of the Novel in English. In 2009 he was the convenor of the judging panel for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.[4]
Contribution to New Zealand literature
Williams is one of the first academics to focus his ublications predominantly on contemporary New Zealand writing. His work is also informed by a strong international context which has enabled him to argue in leaving the Highway against the violent dualities" of New Zealand culture and the "binary habits of New Zealand criticism" and advocate instead independence, difference, continuities, and "complex wholeness".[3]
Works
References
- ^ Mark Williams (ed), The Source of the Song; New Zealand Writers on Catholicism, Victoria University Press, 1995, pp. 9 and 10.
- ^ Mark Williams, Dear Miss Williams, New Zealand Books, Vol. 17, No 1, Autumn 2007, p. 27.
- ^ a b Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1998, pp. 589 and 590.
- ^ Mark Williams, Victoria University of Wellington (accessed 14 May 2010)
External links
[[Category:Former students of St Peter's College, Auckland]
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