Simon During is a New Zealander who studied at Victoria University, Wellington and the University of Auckland before completing his PhD (on George Eliot) at Cambridge. He first joined the English Department at the University of Melbourne in 1983 as a tutor.
After visiting positions at the University of Auckland and the Rhetoric Department at UC Berkeley, he was appointed Robert Wallace Professor at Melbourne in 1993. A Head of Department there in the late 1990s, he was instrumental in establishing the Cultural Studies, Media and Communications, and Publishing programs. In 2001, he left Melbourne for Johns Hopkins, where he taught in the English department for nine years. Between 2010 and 2017 he was a Research Professor at the University of Queensland as well as holding visiting positions at the FU Berlin, Tübingen, Université Paris, the American Academy of Rome, University of Cambridge, and elsewhere. In 2017 he rejoined the University of Melbourne's School of Communications and Culture as an Honorary Professor. He has made contributions to the studies of post colonialism, secularism, Australian and New Zealand literatures as well as to cultural studies. But he has mainly concentrated on relations between literary and cultural history and European (mainly British) literature. His books include Foucault and Literature (Routledge 1991), Patrick White (Oxford 1994), Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Harvard 2002), Exit Capitalism: Literary Culture, Theory, and Post-Secular Modernity (Routledge 2010), and, most recently, Against Democracy: Literary Experience in the Era of Emancipations (Fordham 2012). He is currently writing a book on the idea of the humanities. A full cv is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_qKeIxkaLjIdTGiKFXfH-n3uizLw7z2yROiAOY992dg/edit
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Simon During's highlights
FEATURED Journal article
Out of Europe: How English Clerics Pioneered the Concept of ‘World Literature’
Read moreSimon During's selected work
ENGLISH: THE HISTORY OF A DISCIPLINE 1920-70
Research Grant
1968: Towards a General Secularism
Journal article
The Global South and internationalism: the geographies of post-subjectivity
Journal article
Kerala: A Cultural Studies Tour
Journal article
Stop Defending the Humanities
Book Chapter
Accelerate: why Elizabeth Bowen Liked Cars
Book Chapter
Simon During's selected work
Projects
Displaying the 1 most recent project by Simon During.
Project Types
1
Research Grant
Scholarly Works
Displaying the 10 most recent scholarly works by Simon During.
Honours, Awards and Fellowships
FAHA - Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Credentials
Positions
Positions
Honorary
Culture And Communication
Education
Education
Doctor of Philosophy
University of Cambridge
Master of Arts
University of Auckland
Bachelor of Arts
Victoria University of Wellington