Peter McDonald

Professor Peter D. McDonald is a Fellow of St Hugh's College and a Lecturer at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on the history of 'literature' as a category from the nineteenth century to the present day, on publishing history, and on the relationship between literary institutions and the modern state.
For most of his professional life he has been thinking about the idea of culture as it has been shaped and reshaped over the past two hundred years, and about the processes and perils of literary guardianship, especially in the complex, mobile, and interconnected world that emerged in the course of the long twentieth century. This guiding interest has informed his work on censorship, the rise of mass culture, media history and questions of the book, the public value of literature, critical theory, and interculturalism. It has also led him to write on an eclectic range of authors, including Arnold, Beckett, Bennett, Blanchot, Bourdieu, Brink, Breytenbach, Coetzee, Conan Doyle, Conrad, Derrida, Gordimer, Jensma, Lawrence, Matthews, Mphahlele, Ndebele, Pound, Serote, Woolf, and Yeats. His main publications include 'British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice' (1997) and 'The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences' (2009).

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Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT)

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Writers in Dialogue

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Great Writers Inspire

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Censorship in Literature in South Africa

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Title	Description	People	Date
Ibsen, Scandinavia, and the Making of a World Drama: A Book At Lunchtime	Henrik Ibsen's drama is the most prominent and lasting contribution of the cultural surge seen in Scandinavian literature in the later nineteenth century.	Narve Fulsas, Tore Rem, Peter McDonald, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Julia Mannherz	21 January, 2019
Tower Poetry 2017	Peter McDonald, Vahni Capildeo and Sarah Howe discuss the 2017 Tower Poetry competition.	Peter McDonald, Vahni Capildeo, Sarah Howe	17 May, 2017
Intercultural Literary Practices - Theorising Interculturality	Dr. Birgit Kaiser (Utrecht), Prof. Peter McDonald (English), and Prof. Elleke Boehmer (English)	Birgit Kaiser, Peter McDonald, Elleke Boehmer	20 September, 2014
Peter D McDonald in conversation with Daljit Nagra	Peter D. McDonald talks to the poet Daljit Nagra about cultural diversity, the contemporary life and history of the English language, the canons of English literature, and translation.	Peter McDonald, Daljit Nagra	17 March, 2014
Peter D McDonald in conversation with Amit Chaudhuri	Peter D. McDonald talks to Amit Chaudhuri about his work as a novelist, critic and musician, focusing on his interest in the specificity of the many media he uses and on the challenge of thinking about cultural interconnectedness in new ways.	Peter McDonald, Amit Chaudhuri	5 June, 2013
Peter D McDonald in conversation with Derek Attridge	Peter D. McDonald and Derek Attridge reflect on their different approaches to the questions of literature and public value, and on the bearing this has for teaching and research today.	Peter McDonald, Derek Attridge	4 June, 2013
Peter D McDonald in conversation with Antjie Krog	Peter D. McDonald talks to Antjie Krog about her relationship to Afrikaans, English and African languages, about the promise and perils of translation, and about the challenges of and for writing in a multilingual democracy.	Peter McDonald, Antjie Krog	4 June, 2013
Peter D. McDonald in conversation with Arvind Krishna Mehrotra	Peter D. McDonald talks to Arvind Krishna Mehrotra about his work as a poet, critic and translator, focusing on the idea of triangulation and his interest in the intersections between languages and literary traditions.	Peter McDonald, Arvind Mehrotra	23 April, 2013
DH Lawrence: A Postcolonial Writer?	Professor Peter McDonald draws on the work of Indian novelist and literary critic, Amit Chaudhuri, to open up new ways of how we can think about D.H. Lawrence, not only as a Modernist, but also as a Post/Colonial writer.	Peter McDonald	28 August, 2012
Joseph Conrad and Postcoloniality - Part 2: Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim	Professor Peter McDonald talks to Great Writers Inspire about the Post/Colonial aspects of Joseph Conrad's writing.	Peter McDonald	28 August, 2012
Joseph Conrad and Postcoloniality - Part 1: Conrad and Chinua Achebe	Professor Peter McDonald talks to Great Writers Inspire about the Post/Colonial aspects of Joseph Conrad's writing. In this first part, Peter takes Chinua Achebe's 1975 critique of Conrad as a starting point.	Peter McDonald	28 August, 2012
What is a Great Writer? An academic panel discusses the question.	In this panel discussion from the Great Writers Inspire Engage Event workshop, Dr Seamus Perry, Dr Margaret Kean, Professor Peter McDonald and Dr Ankhi Mukherjee discuss what we mean when we talk about greatness in writing.	Seamus Perry, Margaret Kean, Peter McDonald, Ankhi Mukherjee, Rebecca Beasley	15 May, 2012
J.M. Coetzee	Professor Peter McDonald gives a talk on the work of South African Nobel Laureate, J.M. Coetzee.	Peter McDonald	7 February, 2012
Censorship in South Africa: Introduction	Peter McDonald talks briefly about what first interested him in Censorship of Literature in South Africa.	Peter McDonald	12 January, 2010
Peter McDonald on Censorship in South Africa	Peter McDonald talks with Oliver Lewis about censorship, its philosophical basis and general history within Apartheid South Africa.	Peter McDonald, Oliver Lewis	12 January, 2010
Political Perspectives to State Censorship of Literature	Peter McDonald and David Robertson discuss the idea of state censorship, especially Apartheid era South Africa, looking at the political perspectives and implications of state censorship of literature.	Peter McDonald, David Robertson	17 November, 2009
Literature and State Censorship: A literary perspective	Peter McDonald and Elleke Bohemer discuss state censorship from a literary perspective; also discussing the issues of nationalism, modernism and Apartheid.	Peter McDonald, Elleke Boehmer	17 November, 2009
Legal issues in state censorship	Peter McDonald and Liora Lazarus discuss the legal issues of state censorship especially in Apartheid era South Africa.	Peter McDonald, Liora Lazarus	17 November, 2009
Legal issues in state censorship	Peter McDonald and Liora Lazarus discuss the legal issues of state censorship especially in Apartheid era South Africa.	Peter McDonald, Liora Lazarus	17 November, 2009
Peter McDonald on Censorship in South Africa	Peter McDonald talks about censorship, its philosophical basis and general history within Apartheid South Africa.	Peter McDonald, Oliver Lewis	11 August, 2009
Peter McDonald on Literature	Summary: Peter McDonald talks about how he became to be interested in Literature, how he became to be an academic at Oxford and what it is like to study literature at Oxford.	Peter McDonald, Oliver Lewis	11 August, 2009