Contact Information:
264 Bartlett Hall
UMass
Amherst, MA 0l003
p: 413-545-3474
f: 413-545-3880
clingman@english.umass.edu
Last Modified: Apr. 2005 |
Professor
Stephen Clingman is Professor of English and Director of the Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities of Fine Arts at the University of Massachusetts. He was born and raised in South Africa, where he received his B.A. Hons. from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1977. He then won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he received his D.Phil. in 1983. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts since 1989, and was Chair of the Department from 1994-2000.
Stephen Clingman's first book was The Novels Of Nadine Gordimer: History From The Inside (1986; 2nd edn, Bloomsbury/UMass Press, 1992), and his edited collection of essays by Nadine Gordimer, The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics And Places (Jonathan Cape/Knopf, 1988), has been translated into a number of languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese; a separate edition, Leben im Interregnum: Essays zu Politik und Literatur, was published in Germany in 1987. His most recent book, Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary (1998), a biography of the white Afrikaner who led Nelson Mandela's legal defense at the Rivonia Trial, won the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, South Africa's premier prize for non-fiction. Currently he is working on a book project on 'Transnational Fiction'.
Stephen Clingman's work on Gordimer has been recognized internationally, and in an article on the official Nobel Prize website, Per Wastberg calls his book The Novels of Nadine Gordimer the 'best study' published. Clingman's own articles have ranged from work on Gordimer and other South African writers and topics to a new essay on the West Indian/British writer Caryl Phillips, forthcoming in Salmagundi, together with an interview Clingman conducted with Phillips. His work has appeared in a number of book collections, as well as in journals such as Modern Fiction Studies, Journal of Southern African Studies, and Transition, and he has written book reviews for the New York Times and the Boston Globe, as well as for the Sunday Independent (South Africa). More recently he has branched out into poetry translation, and a non-fiction essay, 'Music of New Orleans', has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Beyond that, Stephen has made a number of radio appearances, including an NPR Talk of the Nation Book Club of the Air discussion on Gordimer's Burger's Daughter (1998).
Professor Clingman has held fellowships at a variety of institutions internationally, including the Southern African Research Program (Yale University, 1983-84); the African Studies Institute (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1984-87); the Society for the Humanities (Cornell University, 1987-88); and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington, D.C., 1993-94). In 1998 he was the keynote speaker at the celebrations of Nadine Gordimer's 75th birthday in Johannesburg, and at the University of Massachusetts he has given the introductions for two visiting Nobel Prize-winners, Nadine Gordimer (1991) and J.M. Coetzee (2003).
Currently Stephen Clingman serves as Director of the Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities and Fine Arts (ISHA), which each year runs faculty seminars on interdisciplinary topics. Past themes have included 'Reproduction', 'Migrations', and 'Sustainability and Stewardship'. For more information on ISHA, please see www.umass.edu/hfa/isha/. |
