Dennis Walder

Dennis Walder (1943-) is an academic, theatre historian and critic.

Also known as Came to England, 1965.

Biography

Born in Cape Town, South Africa on 7th February/2nd July (??), 1943 in Cape Town, the son of Jean Walder Lodge and Ruth (Von Liebenstein) Lodge.

Began his University training at the University Cape Town, completing a BA degree in 1964, then a Master of Arts with honors at the University Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1967, and a Master of Letters, University Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1969. He completed his Ph.D. at the University Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1979.

Assistant lecturer English University Edinburgh, 1969-1973, Workers Education Authority, 1970-1971. Staff tutor arts Open University, Edinburgh, 1974-1981, lecturer literature Milton Keynes, England, 1981-1988, senior lecturer literature England, 1989-1999, professor, head department England, since 1999. Presenter educational radio and television programs British Broadcasting Corporation.

Married Frances Moodie Powell, February 13 1968 (divorced October 1974). Married Mary MacLeod, March 26, 1979. Children: Anna Ruth, Rohan James.

Completed his graduate studies at the University of Cape Town and the University of Edinburgh, where he was an Aytoun Research Fellow in English. He began teaching while completing his . After a spell as Staff Tutor for the Open University in Scotland, he was appointed lecturer and Chair of the Nineteenth Century Novel course at the Open University in London. He introduced postcolonial literature to the Open University curriculum and was founding Director of the Post-Colonial Research Group and a director of The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies. He was promoted to a Chair in 1999 and to Emeritus Professor of Literature in 2010. at the Open University, UK.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Besides having acted as external examiner for many South African studies, and supervised studies on South African theatre, he is a founding member of the editorial board of the South African Theatre Journal, and is Co-editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies.

Among his key publications have been the books Post-Colonial Literatures: History, Language, Theory (1998), Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Memory and Representation (2010) and Athol Fugard, as well as three volumes of Fugard plays, edited for Oxford University Press.

His collection of papers on Athol Fugard and South African theatre has been lodged as an archive at the Lilly Library, Indiana University.

In 2013 he gave the Wertheim Lecture in Comparative Drama at the University of Indiana speaking on “The Play’s the Thing: A Journey through the Drama of South Africa”

See the ESAT Bibliography section for more on his publications.