UWC professor scores A1 first

Illuminates understanding of SA literature

A LIFELONG love of South African literature, and an attempt to share that love with the world, has earned University of the Western Cape (UWC) Extraordinary Professor of English David Attwell a prestigious A-rating from the country’s National Research Foundation.

The honour is awarded only to those who do internationally-respected and field-transforming work.

“I’m thrilled by this news, and very grateful for the support and friendship of colleagues old and new at UWC,” he said.

“This means a great deal to me, especially because I began my academic career at UWC in the heady (Professor Jakes) Gerwel years, having been appointed by our esteemed colleague and friend, the late Stan Ridge.”

Attwell is UWC’s fifth A-rated researcher and the only one with an A1 rating, and he is also the first outside the natural sciences. His main research interests are in post-colonial studies: post-colonial theory, critical formations in post-colonial countries, anglophone African writing, South African literature, and theories and practices of cultural translation.

UWC research office director Professor Burtram Fielding said Attwell had unique academic expertise and an illuminating understanding of the literary landscape.

“This recognition shows the commitment of arts to expand the supervisory capacity of the faculty by appointing extraordinary researchers of this calibre,” he said.Attwell said: “Coming from a humanities background, with siblings in journalism, education and the church, all of us sharing an interest in literature (let’s call it ‘strong

Find the thing that worries you most and make that the basis of your research

David Attwell

Professor of English, UWC

language’), I was unlikely to escape literary studies. I’ve never dabbled – it’s been a compulsion.”

He said much of his work had been on JM Coetzee.

“He is by far the most influential writer South Africa has ever produced. He has a complicated reception in South Africa, but is a figure of real stature in world literature.

“What moves me in his work is its depth and probity, its keenly felt textures.

“I am also absorbed in South African literature more broadly, all its languages and traditions, not only in English. I’m interested in what South African literature is, how it interprets itself.

“The future of literary studies in South Africa will be multilingual, I have no doubt, and UWC is wellplaced to take advantage of that fact, and to develop it,” he said.

His advice for other researchers who might want to become “A-grade” was: “Resist being pinned down to a vocational track too early. Use the time at university to read widely, to explore, to question, to participate, to love (with some caution), and – especially – learn how to write.

“If you write well, you will do well in your career, whatever it is. “Find the thing that worries you most and make that the basis of your research. Doing well as a writer or critic is about responding to an existential itch.”