Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov

Chair of Anglophone Literatures

Russ West-Pavlov teaches and researches comparative Global South cultural and literary studies with foci in the areas of Australia, Africa and the Caribbean. Particular interests are the poetics of space and time and their transformation in the contemporary moment. He co-convenes the MA Cultures of the Global South and teaches in the Comparative Literature programme in the German department. He will be co-convening a Minor in African Literary and Cultural Studies from 2024.

He convened a BMBF/DAAD funded Thematic Research Network with six partner universities in the Global South from 2015 to 2020. That network inaugurated the Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies at the University of Tübingen, of which he is a founding board member.

The work of these universities continues under the aegis of the Doctoral Consortium Global South especially via the delivery of a Doctoral Certificate in Global South Studies.

He has also co-convened a PhD-programme in Entangled Temporalities in the Global South (2018-2021) and now convenes a similar programme entitled Collocations: Constructing Interknowledges, Negotiating Proximities.

He is convenor of the editorial collective of the book series Transdisciplinary Souths (Routledge) and Challenges (Narr).

He has initiated several international visiting chair programmes (DAAD): the Erich Auerbach Chair of Global Literary Studies (2014-2016), and the Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack Chair of Interdisciplinary Australian Studies (2008-2013; at the Free University of Berlin).

Originally from Melbourne, Australia, he completed doctorates at Cambridge and Lille and a senior doctorate at Cologne. He was a professor at the Free University of Berlin (2002-11) and the University of Pretoria (2011-13). He has been a the University of Tübingen as incumbent Chair of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures since 2013.

Prior to working in academia, he was also a forester (Exmoor coast), social worker (Lille and Melbourne), high-school teacher (Münster) and translator (Cologne).

Selected publications

Books (since 2010)

2020 AfrikAffekt: Deutschsprachige Gegenwartsromane zum Herero- und Nama-Genozid: Ein affekttheoretischer Ansatz. Tübingen: Narr/Francke/Attempto.

2019 German as a Contact Zone: Towards a Quantum Theory of Translation. Tübingen: Narr/Francke/Attempto.

2018 Eastern African Literatures: Towards an Aesthetics of Proximity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198745723

2018 (with John Kinsella) Tɛmp(ə)rərɪnəs [Temporariness]: On the Imperatives of Place. Tübingen: Narr/Francke/Attempto.

2013 Temporalities. London: Routledge, 2013. 211pp. ISBN 978-0-415-52074-4 (PBK); 978-0-415-52073-7 (HBK)

[Temporalities] Chinese translation. Peking University Press. Forthcoming 2021.

2010 Spaces of Fiction / Fictions of Space: Postcolonial Place and Literary DeiXis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmilllan, 2010. 250pp. ISBN 978-0-230-23776-6.

Edited volumes (since 2010)

2018 Ed. Russell West-Pavlov: The Global South and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2017.

2017 Ed. R. West-Pavlov and A. Heise-von der Lippe: Literaturwissenschaften in der Krise - Zur Rolle und Relevanz literarischer Praktiken in globalen Krisenzeiten. Tübingen: Narr, 2018.

2014 Ed. R. West-Pavlov. Visions of the Future in Contemporary African Literatures and Cultures. Sondernummer Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 51 (2014). ISSN 0041-476X

2011 Ed. R. West-Pavlov, J. K. S. Makokha & J. Wawrzinek. Border-Crossings: Narrative and Demarcation in Postcolonial Literatures and Media. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011. 279 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-8253-5899-0.

2010 Ed. R. West-Pavlov & J. Wawrzinek. Frontier Skirmishes: Literary and Cultural Debates in Australia after 1992. Heidelberg: Winter, 2010. 332pp. ISBN 978-3-8253-5761-0