Raymond Williams: Literature, Marxism and Cultural Materialism

by John Higgins

The most comprehensive study to date of the theoretical and historical context of Williams' thinking on literature, politics and culture.

229 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 1999

About the author

John Higgins grew up in Bradford in the north of England, and studied at a comprehensive school there before taking up a scholarship to attend Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, and then King's College, Cambridge.

From 1980 to 1985, he was a junior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Geneva, where he also became the founder and director of the Cultural Studies Group, which brought together artists and academics in a consideration of 'the present moment'. He joined the University of Cape Town as a lecturer in 1986.

John Higgins’s research interests have developed in and around his work on the major Welsh literary and cultural critic, Raymond Williams. They include – as well as an obvious focus on Williams himself – work in literary and cultural theory from Adorno to Zizek, with special interests in film theory, psychoanalysis and Marx and Marxism; topics in literary and cultural studies, with focal areas in modernism and avant-garde writing; and questions of academic freedom and higher education policy, both global and local.

Reviews

[Sara Razek · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good take on the prolific life of the British intellectual, Raymond Williams.