Anthony Uhlmann

Biography

One of the leading figures in the study of Samuel Beckett, Anthony Uhlmann’s research is also recognised for its original insights into the relationship between literature and philosophy. He is recognised as a world authority on the philosophical contexts of Beckett’s writing, and for his contribution to the philosophical understanding of literature and modernism studies more generally. He is the Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre and Professor of English in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. He was President of the Australian Universities Heads of English (2013-15), and co-founded this organisation. He was also co-founder of the Australasian Association for Literature, which sponsors an annual conference. He was editor of the Journal of Beckett Studies (2008-14), and co-founder of the Sydney Review of Books. He is the author of three monographs, two on Samuel Beckett with Cambridge University Press and one on Modernism and how literature can be understood to develop a particular kind of thinking which profoundly contributes to our understanding of the world. He is currently completing a monograph on J. M. Coetzee and process and method in literary fiction. He is also working on a collaborative project examining Spinoza’s importance to literary history and how his philosophy offers crucial insight into the nature of artistic practice. As Director of Writing and Society he is overseeing projects related to the impact of teaching creative writing into aged care facilities, and writing practice within ‘world’ literary traditions, in Australia, China and South America.