Prof Daniel Williams

BA (U.E.A), MA (Harvard), PhD (Cantab.) Director, CREW

Professor Daniel Williams
BA (U.E.A), MA (Harvard), PhD (Cantab.)
Daniel.G.Williams@swansea.ac.uk 
 Tel: 01792 205678 ext. 4340
Fax: 01792 295761
Keir Hardie Building Rm 212

Since taking up his post at Swansea in January 2000, Daniel Williams has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the fields of Welsh, Irish and African American literatures. He is Director of CREW (Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales) and is particularly interested in the ways in which national and ethnic identities are manifested in literature, in the inter-relationships between literary traditions, and in the development of comparative approaches to literature. From 1995-7 he was a Frank Knox Fellow in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures and the Du Bois Institute for African American Studies at Harvard University. He was also a member of the first 'Longfellow Seminar in American literatures in languages other than English,' contributing to the volume American Babel (see publications).

He has published articles (in English and Welsh) on the relationship between W. B. Yeats and the Pan-Celtic movement in the 1890s, on Dylan Thomas and American literature, and on the relationship between modernism and nationalism in early twentieth century Welsh and African American writing. He is the editor of a collection of Raymond Williams's writings on Wales, Who Speaks for Wales: Nation, Culture, Identity (University of Wales Press, 2003), and his most recent publication, Ethnicity and Cultural Authority: From Matthew Arnold to W. E. B. Du Bois(Edinburgh University Press, 2006), was a Times Literary Supplement ‘Book of the Year’ and was longlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year Award 2007. 

Daniel Williams was on AHRC funded research leave from 2004-5 completing a study of cultural connections between African Americans and the Welsh. Articles deriving from this work have appeared in the volume Beyond the Difference (see publications) and the journal Comparative American Studies (). A full length study entitled Transatlantic Exchange: African Americans and the Welsh 1845-1945 will appear in 2008 in the celebrated CREW series of monographs published by the University of Wales Press. In connection with this work Daniel Williams organised a ground-breaking international conference in March 2007 entitled ‘Transatlantic Exchange: African Americans and the Celtic Nations’.

Daniel is also a member of the jazz sextet ‘Burum’ who launched their first album ‘Alawon: The Songs of Welsh Folk’ in March 2007. http://www.myspace.com/burumjazz

Supervision

See the links on the left for undergraduate and MA teaching. Daniel Williams has supervised the following PhDs to completion.

• Nicholas Jones, ‘So Often in this Country Lies Tell the Truth: The Poetry of Harri Webb’. PhD awarded 2005.
• Emma Davies. ‘Manufacturing Men: Literary Masculinities in Industrial Welsh writing in English’. PhD awarded 2006.

He is currently supervising the following. 

• Wendy Hayes-Jones, The Novels and Essays of Ishmael Reed (Started on part time basis in 2006).
• Theresa Vara-Dannen. African Americans in Nineteenth-century Connecticut. Started 2006.

Daniel Williams would be interested in supervising PhDs in the fields of Welsh, Irish and African-American literatures, and more broadly on comparative approaches to literature, the idea of the intellectual, multilingualism in literature, nationalism and ethnicity in literature, and cultural criticism.

Markers of ‘Peer Esteem’.

• Member of the Grants to English language Publishers Panel of the Welsh Books Council (2003 - ).
• Member of the Arts Council of Wales Grants Awarding Panel (2001-3).
• Delivered the annual Rhys Davies Lecture, University of Glamorgan, 2004.
• Delivered the annual Centre for Welsh-American Studies Lecture, Cardiff University, 2006.
• Member of Judging Panel of Welsh Academi Book of the Year, 2006.
• Presented Telescop and Ikandi productions, one-hour documentary ‘Hanes Cudd y Molly Maguires’, 2006.
• Advisory panel for ‘The Library of Wales’, a Welsh Assembly financed series of classic Welsh texts.
• Assisted Welsh Home Office in preparation of ‘Wales and Slavery’ pamphlet, 2007.
• See ‘publications’ for a list of invited lectures. 

Daniel Williams’s publications