Stephen Clingman

Distinguished Professor

Stephen Clingman is Distinguished Professor of English and former Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute. He received his BA Hons. from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), and his D. Phil. from the University of Oxford. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts since 1989, and was Chair of the English Department from 1994-2000. His research and teaching fields include South African literature and politics, postcolonial fiction, transnational fiction, and twentieth-century and contemporary British fiction. Besides his literary critical work, he has also published a biography and memoir, and has written reviews for the New York Times and Boston Globe. Learn more on his personal website.

Publications

Books:

• William Kentridge, Royal Academy of Arts, London. Catalogue commissioned by William Kentridge and the Royal Academy of Arts: “William Kentridge: Liberating Vision, and Six Meditations”. September 2022.
• Birthmark, a memoir (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2015; Amherst: U of Massachusetts Press, 2016); also on Kindle.
• The Grammar of Identity: Transnational Fiction and the Nature of the Boundary (Oxford University Press, 2009; paperback 2012).
• Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary (1998), a biography of the white Afrikaner who led Nelson Mandela's legal defense at the Rivonia Trial. New edition (Jacana Media, 2013); also on Kindle.
• Nadine Gordimer, The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics And Places, ed. and introduced by Stephen Clingman (Jonathan Cape/Knopf, 1988); translated into a number of languages.
• The Novels Of Nadine Gordimer: History From The Inside (1986; 2nd edn, Bloomsbury/UMass Press, 1992).

Recent Articles and Chapters:

• "My South African American Story." In African Scholars and Intellectuals in North American Academies: Reflections on Exile and Migration, ed. Sabella Ogbobode Abidde. Routledge African Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2021), 24-33.
• ‘Trump the Antisemantic, and the Boundaries of Populism.’ Safundi 21.3 (2020), 235-50. DOI:10.1080/17533171.2020.1759273. Joint publication by special arrangement, American Imago 77.2 (2020), 255-76. DOI:10.1353/aim.2020.0021.
• "The Question of Dwelling: South Africa and Elsewhere." English Studies in Africa 63.1 (2020), 89-103. DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2020.1780758. 
• "Afrikaner Revolutionary Revisited: Bram Fischer in Our Times." The 2019 Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture. Interventions, 22.7 (2020), 825-39. DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2020.1762697. 
• “‘Prisoners are Prisoners’: Criminals and Enemies in South Africa.” In Criminals and Enemies, ed. Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas and Martha Merrill Umphrey. Amherst Series in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019), 73-100.
• “Writing the Biofictive: Caryl Phillips and The Lost Child,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989418808010; print forthcoming.
• “Fugitive/Narrative: Some Starting Points,” Politics/Letters, no. 12, 28 May 2018. 

Events and Videos:

• Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture, University of Oxford, 24 October 2019.

Work

Awards and Accolades

• 1999 Alan Paton Award for Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary; South Africa’s premier prize for non-fiction.
• 2012 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer and Chancellor’s Medal, University of Massachusetts
• 2014 Jackie M. Pritzen Lecture, Five College Consortium
• 2016 Birthmark longlisted for Alan Paton Award
• Papers of Stephen Clingman relating to Bram Fischer, c. 1908-c.1988. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.