Emeritus Professor
English Studies University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA
David Richards has an M.A. in English from the University of Cambridge, an M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He joined the Department as Professor of English Studies in 2006 having held posts at the Universities of Leeds and Birmingham and at the Open University where he was the founding Director of the Ferguson Research Centre. He was the Professor and Chair of the Division of Literature and Languages, the Head of the Department of English Studies and Director of the Centre of Postcolonial Studies at Stirling. David Richards is now Emeritus Professor of English Studies at the University of Stirling and currently Visiting Professor with the Division of English at NTU, Singapore.
His chief research interests are in the areas of British, colonial and postcolonial literature, anthropology, art history and cultural theory. His publications include Blackwell’s Companion to Postcolonial Literature co-edited volume with S. Chew (2010), Urban Generations: Post-colonial cities co- edited volume with T. Agoumy and T. Belghazi,, (2005) and Masks of Difference: Cultural Representations in Literature, Anthropology and Art, Cambridge University Press (1995). He has published widely on Postcolonial and European Modernist writings and paintings, English Literature, anthropology and fine art, with publications on Christopher Okigbo, Derek Walcott, Homi Bhabha, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Neil Bissoondath, Chinua Achebe, Margaret Laurence, Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri, Clifford Geertz, Sir James Frazer, Canon John Roscoe, Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Malinowski, Picasso, Matisse, Max Ernst, Sir Walter Scott, Major John Richardson, Aphra Behn, John Gabriel Stedman, Titian, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Abdelkebir Khatibi, Edith Wharton, Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille, and Max Raphael. He has given lectures and papers at conferences and colloquia at universities throughout the UK, most recently at the universities of Cambridge, Bradford, York, London Metropolitan, Dundee, Edinburgh, Kent, at AHRB Centre CATH, Leeds, and The British Museum. Internationally, he has given papers and invited lectures at the University of Tampere in Finland, at the Universities of Lagos and Nsukka in Nigeria, at Plovdiv in Bulgaria, at NTU Singapore, and at Peking University, Beijing, People's Republic of China, and at numerous universities in Morocco. He is currently completing a monograph on the cultural history of the archaic, which will examine the role of anthropology and (more centrally) archaeology in modernism and postcolonialism over the period from 1875 to the present. He is also developing an interdisciplinary collaborative project on the politics of memory.
Book Chapter
"Injured by time and defeated by violence": Prospects of Loch Tay
Richards D (2013) "Injured by time and defeated by violence": Prospects of Loch Tay. In: Sassi C & van Heijnsbergen T (eds.) Within and without Empire: Scotland across the (post)colonial borderline. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 14-29. http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/Within-and-Without-Empire--Scotland-Across-the--Post-colonial-Borderline1-4438-4922-7.htm
Authored Book
A Concise Companion to Postcolonial Literature
Chew S & Richards D (2010) A Concise Companion to Postcolonial Literature. Concise Companions to Literature and Culture. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405135034.html; https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444317879
Book Chapter
Richards D (2010) Framing Identities. In: Chew S & Richards D (eds.) A Concise Companion to Postcolonial Literature. Concise Companions to Literature and Culture. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 9-28. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405135034.html; https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444317879.ch1
Book Chapter
Postcolonial Anthropology in the French-Speaking World
Richards D (2009) Postcolonial Anthropology in the French-Speaking World. In: Forsdick C & Murphy D (eds.) Postcolonial Thought in the French-Speaking World. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, pp. 173-184. http://global.oup.com/academic/product/postcolonial-thought-in-the-french-speaking-world-9781846310546;jsessionid=1917DE243113119AB1F6646F0E222AF6?cc=gb〈=en&#
Book Chapter
Richards D (2007) Another Architecture. In: Hardwick L & Gillespie C (eds.) Classics in Postcolonial worlds. Classical Presences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 349-363. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199296101.do
Book Chapter
The Palaeolithic Modern: from Altamira to Guernica
Richards D (2006) The Palaeolithic Modern: from Altamira to Guernica. In: Pearson R (ed.) The Victorians and the Ancient World. Newcastle on Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 81-92. http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/The-Victorians-and-the-Ancient-World--Archaeology-and-Classicism-in-Nineteenth-Century-Culture.htm
Book Chapter
The poetry of Christopher Okigbo
Richards D (2004) The poetry of Christopher Okigbo. In: Danson BR & Gupta S (eds.) Aestheticism and Modernism: Debating Twentieth Century Literature 1900- 1960. Twentieth-Century Literature: Texts and Debates. London: Routledge. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415351683/
Article
Translating desire: Abdelkebir Khatibi, Calligraphy and the bilangue
Richards D (2004) Translating desire: Abdelkebir Khatibi, Calligraphy and the bilangue. Moving Worlds, 4 (1). http://www.movingworlds.net/volumes/4/bilangue/
Authored Book
Masks of Difference: Cultural Representations in Literature, Anthropology and Art
Richards D (2003) Masks of Difference: Cultural Representations in Literature, Anthropology and Art. Translated into Chinese by Zhonglian Yan, Liaoning: Liaoning Education Press.
Article
'So where is Cythera?': Walcott’s painted islands
Richards D (2003) 'So where is Cythera?': Walcott’s painted islands. Kunapipi, 25 (1), pp. 43-52.
Book Chapter
Death and the King’s Horseman and the Masks of Language
Richards D (2002) Death and the King’s Horseman and the Masks of Language. In: Gikandi S (ed.) Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton. http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-97761-5/
Article
Staging the word: the spectacle of the text in African literature
Richards D (2001) Staging the word: the spectacle of the text in African literature. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 3 (3), pp. 405-418. https://doi.org/10.1080/713769067
Book Chapter
Making (Pre-)History: Mycenae, Pausanias, Frazer
Richards D (2001) Making (Pre-)History: Mycenae, Pausanias, Frazer. In: Bell M, Chew S, Elliot S, Hunter L & West IJ (eds.) Re-constructing the Book: Literary Texts in Transmission. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 112-123.
Book Chapter
'Canvas of Blood': Okigbo’s African Modernism
Richards D (2000) 'Canvas of Blood': Okigbo’s African Modernism. In: Bery A & Murray P (eds.) Comparing Postcolonial Literatures: Dislocations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 229-239. http://us.macmillan.com/comparingpostcolonialliteratures/AshokBery
Book Chapter
"The culture of displacement and its effects": Frazer, Freud and Others
Richards D (1999) "The culture of displacement and its effects": Frazer, Freud and Others. In: Cribb T (ed.) Imagined Commonwealths: Cambridge Essays on Commonwealth and International Literature in English. Cambridge Commonwealth Series. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Authored Book
Masks of difference: cultural representations in literature, anthropology and art
Richards D (1995) Masks of difference: cultural representations in literature, anthropology and art. Cultural Margins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://www.cambridge.org/co/academic/subjects/literature/literary-theory/masks-difference-cultural-representations-literature-anthropology-and-art
Book Chapter
'A History of Interruptions': Dislocated Mimesis in the Writings of Neil Bissoondath and Ben Okri
Richards D (1992) 'A History of Interruptions': Dislocated Mimesis in the Writings of Neil Bissoondath and Ben Okri. In: Rutherford A (ed.) From Commonwealth to Post-colonial: Critical Essays. Coventry: Dangaroo, pp. 74-82.
Article
Repossessing Time: Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah
Richards D (1990) Repossessing Time: Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah. Kunapipi, 12 (2), pp. 130-138.
Book Chapter
A Tour of Babel: Frazer and Theories of Language
Richards D (1990) A Tour of Babel: Frazer and Theories of Language. In: Fraser R (ed.) Sir James Frazer and the Literary Imagination: Essays in Affinity and Influence. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Article
Owe l'esin òrò: Proverbs like horses: Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman
Richards D (1984) Owe l'esin òrò: Proverbs like horses: Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 19 (1), pp. 86-97. https://doi.org/10.1177/002198948401900110