Rate My Professor Peter Marks

Professor Peter Marks is Emeritus Professor in the Discipline of English and Writing in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. He completed a combined Honours degree in English Literature and Political Science at the University of New South Wales and a PhD in English at the University of Edinburgh. Marks previously taught at the University of Hull before joining the University of Sydney, where he served for 25 years, including multiple terms as Chair of the Department of English.

His research specializations encompass the relationships between literature and cinema, literature and politics, periodical culture, utopian and dystopian fiction, and surveillance studies. Marks is a recognized authority on George Orwell, authoring George Orwell the Essayist: Literature, Politics and the Periodical Culture (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Imagining Surveillance: Eutopian and Dystopian Literature and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2015). Other key publications include The Odyssey of D.H. Lawrence: Modernism, Europe and the New World and contributions to The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures (2022). He has published articles on films such as Adaptation and Code 46, as well as on Margaret Atwood, socialist realism, and D.H. Lawrence. Marks received Australian Research Council funding through Discovery Project DP200101120 in 2020 amounting to $136,593. His service includes roles on the editorial team of Sydney Studies in English and membership in the Surveillance & Everyday Life Research Group. He has delivered public lectures, including on George Orwell for the Friends of the University of Sydney Library, and contributed expert commentary to ABC Radio and Inside Story.