Derek Attridge

Derek Attridge FBA (born 6 May 1945) is a South African-born British academic in the field of English literature and a current Professor of English at the University of York, a post he has held since 2003. Attridge undertakes research in South African literature, James Joyce, deconstruction and literary theory and the performance of poetry. He wrote a monograph on South African writer J. M. Coetzee.

Professor Attridge's new work, The Cambridge History of South African Literature, to be co-edited with Dr. David Atwell of York, will mark the 10th time that Cambridge University Press will be publishing a work by Professor Attridge.

In November 2015, Attridge signed an open letter that shut down a planned University of York event that aimed to raise men's issues on International Men's Day.

Education

Attridge received his Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Natal University in South Africa before moving to the UK to complete his Master of Arts (MA) and PhD at the University of Cambridge. He was a professor at Rutgers University until 1997, when he moved to the University of York.

Selected publications

• Well-weighed Syllables: Elizabethan Verse in Classical Metres Cambridge University Press, 1974
• The Rhythms of English Poetry Longman, 1982
• Post-structuralist Joyce (co-edited with Daniel Ferrer) Cambridge University Press, 1984
• The Linguistics of Writing: Arguments between Language and Literature (co-edited with Nigel Fabb, Alan Durant, and Colin MacCabe) Manchester University Press and Routledge, 1987
• Post-structuralism and the Question of History (co-edited with Geoff Bennington and Robert Young) Cambridge University Press, 1987
• Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference from the Renaissance to James Joyce. Cornell University Press and Methuen, 1988; reissued, Routledge, 2004
• The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (edited) Cambridge University Press 1990; second, revised edition, 2004
• Acts of Literature, by Jacques Derrida (edited) Routledge, 1992
• Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction Cambridge University Press, 1995
• Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy 1970-1995 (co-edited with Rosemary Jolly). Cambridge University Press, 1998
• Joyce Effects: On Language, Theory, and History Cambridge University Press, 2000
• Semicolonial Joyce (co-edited with Marjorie Howes) Cambridge University Press, 2000
• Meter and Meaning: An Introduction to Rhythm in Poetry (with Thomas Carper) Routledge, 2003
• J. M.Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event University of Chicago Press and KwaZulu-Natal University Press, 2004
• The Singularity of Literature Routledge, 2004
• Ulysses: A Casebook (edited) Oxford University Press, 2004
• How to Read Joyce Granta Books, 2007
• Reading and Responsibility: Deconstruction’s Traces Edinburgh University Press, 2010
• Theory after 'Theory' (co-edited with Jane Elliott) Routledge, 2011
• The Cambridge History of South African Literature (co-edited with David Attwell) Cambridge University Press, 2012
• Moving Words: Forms of English Poetry Oxford University Press, 2013
• Derek Attridge in Conversation (with David Jonathan Bayot and Francisco Roman Guevara) Sussex Academic Press and De La Salle University Press, 2015
• The Craft of Poetry: Dialogues on Minimal Interpretation (with Henry Staten) Routledge, 2015
• The Work of Literature Oxford University Press, 2015

Previous appointments

• Lecturer/Senior Lecturer - University of Southampton (1973–1984)
• Professor - University of Strathclyde (1984–1988)
• Various foreign appointments, including Leverhulme Research Professor - Rutgers University (1988–1998)

Honours and awards

• Guggenheim Fellowship (1993-4)
• Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Prize (1999)
• ESSE Book Award (2006)
• Fellow - British Academy (2007)

External links

• University of York profile
• Audio of Derek Attridge's lecture "Reading and Responsibility." at Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities on October 16, 2007.
• The Cambridge History of South African Literature - A link to Dr. Attridge's new Cambridge title, his 10th book to be published by the press.