Rate My Professor Andrew van der Vlies

Professor Andrew van der Vlies serves as Dean of the School of Humanities within the College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities at the University of Adelaide. Born and raised in South Africa, he earned a BA in English and Law and a BA Honours in English from Rhodes University in 1996, an MA in English from the same institution in 1998, an MPhil in English Literature (1880–present) from the University of Oxford in 2000, and a DPhil in English Literature from Oxford in 2004. His doctoral research, supervised by Peter D. McDonald, explored the concept of a ‘South African’ literary tradition spanning 1883–1979. Additionally, he holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching from the University of Sheffield. His career includes positions as Lecturer at the University of Sheffield (2005–2009) and Professor at Queen Mary University of London (2010–2021), before joining the University of Adelaide as Professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing in January 2021. He also maintains an honorary role as Extraordinary Professor in the Department of English at the University of the Western Cape.

Van der Vlies's research encompasses modern and contemporary literatures in English, particularly British, North American, African, and Australian works, with emphases on South African literatures in English and Afrikaans, global and peripheral modernisms, print and book cultures (colonial and postcolonial), affect studies, gender and sexuality/queer theory, visual cultures, and translation. Notable publications include his monograph South African Textual Cultures: White, Black, Read All Over (Manchester University Press, 2011), the edited volume Print, Text, and Book Cultures in South Africa (Wits University Press, 2012), Present Imperfect: Contemporary South African Writing (Oxford University Press, 2017), the edition of Zoë Wicomb’s Race, Nation, Translation: South African Essays, 1990–2013 (Yale University Press, 2018), and co-edited South African Writing in Transition (Bloomsbury, 2019) and The Bloomsbury Handbook to J. M. Coetzee (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). He has held fellowships from the British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, Harry Ransom Research Center, and Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, and was co-investigator on a British Arts and Humanities Research Council project on literary modernisms in South Africa. Previously lead editor of Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies for ten years, he continues on its editorial board and others, and serves as general co-editor for an Edinburgh University Press series on modernist cultures. He is actively translating Afrikaans literature, including works by Sheila Cussons and Karel Schoeman.