1
CURRICULUM VITAEDOUGLAS KERR
Schoolof English
University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam Road
Hong Kong, PR China / Tel +852 2859 7938
Fax +852 2559 7139
Current post:Professor, Schoolof English, University of Hong Kong
EDUCATION
1969-72
University of Cambridge, TrinityCollege.
1969-70 Exhibitioner in Modern Languages. 1970-72 Exhibitioner in English.
B.A. (Hons) 1972. M.A. 1975, University of Cambridge.
1972-78
University of Warwick.
Doctoral studies in Comparative Literature. Thesis, A comparison of some English and French literary responses to the 1914-1918 Great War.
Ph.D in Comparative Literature, 1978.
WORKING EXPERIENCE
1975-76
Part-time tutor of undergraduate students at New Hall, University of Cambridge.
1975-77
Part-time tutor of undergraduate students at the University of Warwick, Department of English.
1977-78
English instructor, Ecole Spéciale de Travaux Publics, Paris; for the Anglo-French Institute.
1979-89
Lecturer, Department of English Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong.
1989-1995
Lecturer, Department of English, University of Hong Kong.
1995-2006
Senior Lecturer (retitled Associate Professor 1996), Department of English, University of Hong Kong
1996-1999
Head of the English Department, University of Hong Kong. (November 1996-99)
1999-2000 Deputy Head, English Department. University of Hong Kong
2002-3Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts (Postgraduate Education)
2006- Professor, Schoolof English
2006-8 Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts (Research and Postgraduate Education)
VISITING APPOINTMENTS AND HONOURS
1994, January to September
Visiting Scholar, WolfsonCollege, University of Oxford
2000-1 academic year
Visiting Research Fellow, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London
2002
HKU Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award 2002
2005-6 academic year
Honorary Research Fellow, BirkbeckCollege, University of London
2009
HKU Research Output Prize
2011
Elected Foundation Fellow of the Hong KongAcademy of the Humanities
Association Membership
Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies
Modernist Studies Association
Royal Asiatic Society
Australasian, British, and North American Victorian Studies Associations
(all by subscription)
The Orwell Society (by invitation, founding member)
Hong KongAcademy for the Humanities, Foundation Fellow
______
PUBLICATIONS
MONOGRAPHS
Wilfred Owen’s Voices: Language and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 1993) 346 pp
George Orwell Writers and their Work series (Tavistock: Northcote House, 2003) 112 pp
[Spanish translation, Segovia, Sergio Martínez, 2012]
Eastern Figures: Orient and Empire in British Writing (Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press, 2008) 258 pp
EDITED VOLUMES
Kanglade jingpin xuan [Conrad’s Major Tales], selected and ed. Zhu Jiong-Qiang and Douglas Kerr (Shangdong, PRC: Shangdong Arts Publishing, 1999), 465 pp
Cross-Cultural Communications: Literature, Language, Ideas, Special Issue of Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 9 nos 1 and 2 (1999), eds. Tong Qingsheng and Douglas Kerr, 163 pp
Critical Zone 1: A Forum for Chinese and Western Knowledge, eds. Q. S. Tong, Wang Shouren and Douglas Kerr (Hong Kong and Nanjing: HKU Press and NanjingUniversity Press, 2004) 233 pp
Critical Zone 2: A Forum for Chinese and Western Knowledge, eds. Q. S. Tong, Wang Shouren and Douglas Kerr (Hong Kong and Nanjing: HKU Press and NanjingUniversity Press, 2006) 307 pp
A Century of Travels in China: Critical Essays on Travel Writing from the 1840s to the 1940s, eds. Douglas Kerr and Julia Kuehn (Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press, 2007) 232 pp
Critical Zone 3: A Forum for Chinese and Western Knowledge, eds. Douglas Kerr, Q. S. Tong and Wang Shouren (Hong Kong and Nanjing: HKU Press and NanjingUniversity Press, 2008) 236 pp
JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Wilfred Owen and the Social Question”, English Literature in Transition 34 no 2 (1991) 182-95
“David Henry Hwang and the Revenge of Madam Butterfly”, The Quill: Asian Writers’ League Journal 3 no 1 (July 1991) 13-25 [reprint]. Also reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism vol. 196 (Detroit: Gale Research, 2005) 168-74
“The Disciplines of the Wars: Army Training and the Language of Wilfred Owen”, Modern Language Review 87 no 2 (April 1992) 286-299
“Brothers in Arms: Family Language in Wilfred Owen”, Review of English Studies (New Series) 43 no 172 (1992) 518-34
“‘Strange Meeting’ Again”, Connotations 3 no 2 (1993-4) 173-85
“Orientations: James Fenton and Indochina”, Contemporary Literature 35 no 3 (Fall 1994) 476-91
“Crowds, Colonialism, and Conrad’s Lord Jim”, Conradian 18 no 2 (Autumn 1994) 49-64
“Disorientations: Auden and Isherwood’s China”, Literature and History (third series) 5 no 2 (Autumn 1996) 53-67
“Colonial Habitats: Orwell and Woolf in the Jungle”, English Studies 78 no 2 (March 1997) 149-61[reprinted in A View of our Own: Ethnocentric Perspectives in Literature (Kuala Lumpur: Fakulti Pengajian Bahasa, UKM, 1996) 234-47]
“Stories of the East: Leonard Woolf and the Genres of Colonial Discourse”, English Literature in Transition 41 no 3 (1998) 261-78
“Conrad and ‘The Three Ages of Man’”, Conradian 23 no 2 (Autumn 1998) 27-44
“Orwell, Animals and the East”, Essays in Criticism 49 no 3 (July1999) 234-55
“A Passage to Kowloon Tong: Paul Theroux and Hong Kong 1997”, Journal of Commonwealth Literature 34 no 2 (1999) 75-84
“Significant Others: Identity and Difference in Cross-Cultural Communication”, [with Q. S. Tong], Cross-Cultural Communications: Literature, Language, Ideas, Special issue of Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 9 nos. 1 and 2 (1999), eds. Q. S. Tong and Douglas Kerr, 1-11
“Three Ways of Going Wrong: Kipling, Conrad, Coetzee”, Modern Language Review 95:1 (January 2000) 1-10
“Yingguo xiaoshuo yu fanzui xianchang [British Fiction at the Scene of the Crime]”, trans. Wang Lixing, Waiguo Wenxue [Foreign Literature] 2000 no. 2 (March 2000) 65-71
“Timothy Mo’s Man Sundae and other overseas workers”, Journal of Commonwealth Literature 36 no 2 (2001) 15-28
“History and Theirstories: a review of some recent Australian and Asian fiction” [Review essay on contemporary fiction] Westerly 46 (2001) 190-203
“Orwell’s BBC Broadcasts: Colonial Discourse and the Rhetoric of Propaganda”, Textual Practice 16 no 3 (Winter 2002) 473-490
“Joseph Conrad’s Magic Circles”, Essays in Criticism 53 no. 4 (October 2003) 345-65
“Not knowing the Oriental: ignorance and power in the colonial East”, New Zealand Journal of Oriental Studies 5:2 (December 2003) 33-46
“Orwell, India and the BBC”, Literature and History third series, 13:1 (Spring 2004) 43-57
“Introduction: Difference and Convergence in Globalization”, [with Q. S. Tong] Critical Zone 1: A Forum for Chinese and Western Knowledge, eds. Q. S. Tong, Wang Shouren and Douglas Kerr (Hong Kong and Nanjing: HKU Press and NanjingUniversity Press, 2004) 1-17
“You shixue dao xiucixue zaizhouhuilai: wenxue yu huayu” (“Poetics to Rhetoric and back: literature and discourse”), Waiguo Wenxue[Foreign Literature] 2006 no. 4 (July 2006) 28-32
“The Quiet American and the Novel”, Studies in the Novel, 38:1 (Spring 2006) 95-107
“Introduction”, [with Q. S. Tong and Wang Shouren] Critical Zone 2: A Forum for Chinese and Western Knowledge, eds. Q. S. Tong, Wang Shouren and Douglas Kerr (Hong Kong and Nanjing: HKU Press and NanjingUniversity Press, 2006) 1-8
“Stealing Victory?: The Strange Case of Conrad and Buchan”, Conradiana40:2 (Summer 2008)147-63
“Introduction”, [with Q. S. Tong and Wang Shouren] Critical Zone 3: A Forum for Chinese and Western Knowledge, eds. Douglas Kerr, Q. S. Tong and Wang Shouren (Hong Kong and Nanjing: Hong KongUniversity Press and NanjingUniversity Press, 2008) 1-11
“Chinese Boxes: Conrad’s Typhoon and the History of the Chinese”, Clio 39:1 (2009) 1-24
“The Straight Left: Sport and the Nation in Arthur Conan Doyle”, Victorian Literature and Culture 38:1 (March 2010) 187-206
“Arthur Conan Doyle and the Consumption Cure”, Literature and Historythird series 19:2 (2010) 36-51
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Literature and Language”, English Language/Literature (Hong Kong: SSETA, 1988) 26-37
“David Henry Hwang and the Revenge of Madam Butterfly”, Asian Voices in English, ed. Mimi Chan and Roy Harris (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1991) 119-130
“Teaching the Orient”, in Teaching English as a Second Language: The Role of Literature, ed. Jenny Yuen (Macau: University of Macau, 1992) 58-70
“Wilfred Owen: The Poet in his Time”, Companion to Literature, ed. Sandra Adams (Macau: University of Macau, 1996) 140-8
“Introduction” to Edmund Blunden, A Hong Kong House: Poems 1951-1961 (Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press, 2001) 99-106
“A Passage to Kowloon Tong: Paul Theroux and Hong Kong 1997”, Sharing a Commonwealth ed. C. S. Lim and others (Kuala Lumpur: ACLALS and University of Malaya, 2001) 204-18 [reprint]
“Journey to a War: a test for men from Europe”, in W. H. Auden: A Legacy ed. David Garrett Izzo, (West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press and South Carolina UP, 2002) 275-96
“Afterword” to Martin Alexander, Clearing Ground (Hong Kong: Chameleon Press, 2004) 105-10
Notes to Rudyard Kipling, Kim, Introduction by Pankaj Mishra, Random House Modern Library (New York: Random House, 2004) 289-306
“Introduction” (with Julia Kuehn), A Century of Travels in China: Critical Essays on Travel Writing from the 1840s to the 1940s, eds. Douglas Kerr and Julia Kuehn (Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press, 2007) 1-12
“Agnes Smedley: The Fellow-Traveler’s Tales”, A Century of Travels in China: Critical Essays on Travel Writing from the 1840s to the 1940s, eds. Douglas Kerr and Julia Kuehn (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007) 163-76
“Ruins in the Jungle: Nature and Narrative”, Asian Crossings: Travel Writing on China, Japan and Southeast Asia, eds. Steve Clark and Paul Smethurst (Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press, 2008) 131-40
“Locating Louise Ho”, Critical Zone 3: A Forum for Chinese and Western Knowledge, eds. Douglas Kerr, Q. S. Tong and Wang Shouren (Hong Kong and Nanjing: Hong KongUniversity Press and NanjingUniversity Press, 2008) 15-36
“Afterword”, Incense Tree: Collected Poems of Louise Ho (Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press, 2009) 155-62
“‘A Fraud called John Buchan’: Buchan, Joseph Conrad and Literary Theft”, Reassessing John Buchan: Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps, ed. Kate Macdonald (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009) 141-52
“Louise Ho and the Local Turn: The Place of English Poetry in Hong Kong”, Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image, ed. Kam Louie (Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press, 2010) 75-96.
SCHOLARLY REVIEWS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS
“Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory”, Contemporary Literary Criticism 74 (1993) 121-2
“Kim (Kipling)”, The 1890s: An Encyclopaedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture, ed. George Cevasco (New York: Garland, 1993) 330-2
“Review of Adrian Caesar, Taking it like a Man: Suffering, Sexuality and the War Poets”, English Literature in Transition 37 no 3 (1994) 370-4
“Hong Kong: Foreign Writers”, Encyclopaedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, ed. Eugene Benson (London: Routledge, 1994) 541-2
“Introduction”, The Works of Wilfred Owen, Wordsworth Poetry Library (London: Wordsworth, 1994 vii-xi
“Review of The Collected Writings of T. E. Hulme, ed. Karen Csengeri”, English Literature in Transition 38 no 4 (1995) 561-3
“Review of Bernard Bergonzi, Heroes’ Twilight, 3rd edition”, English Literature in Transition 40 no 1 (1997) 83-6
“Review of H. T. Kirby-Smith, The Origins of Free Verse”, English Literature in Transition 41 no 1 (1998) 118-21
Entries on “Life’s Handicap”, “Kim”, “Plain Tales from the Hills”, “Rudyard Kipling”, in The Literary Encyclopaedia,
“Review of Robert Crawford, The Modern Poet: Poetry, Academia, and Knowledge”, English Literature in Transition 46 no 1 (2003) 92-95
“Pygmalion in Hong Kong”, The Shavian 10:2 (Spring 2006) 2-4
“Review of Brian Shelmerdine, British Representations of the Spanish Civil War”, Literature and History, third series, 17:1 (Spring 2008) 100-01
“Orwell, Kipling and Empire”, The Orwell Essay (Finlay, 2008)
“Review of Alex Davis and Lee M. Jenkins ed., The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry”, English Literature in Transition52 no 2 (2009) 239-43
Entries on “A Study in Scarlet”, “The Sign of the Four”, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, “The Valley of Fear”, in The Literary Encyclopaedia, 2009
“Review of Murray Roston, Graham Greene’s Narrative Strategies”, Studies in the Novel 41:1 (Spring 2009) 135-37
Entries on Nine Dragons, Struggle of a Hong Kong Girl, Old Filth, Hadley, Typhoon Season, The Book of Change,The Year of the Hungry Tiger,in Hong Kong English Literature Database
“Leung Ping-Kwan's Amblings: A Review of the Right-hand Pages”, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Fourth Anniversary Issue, Nov. 2011,
“Living with George Orwell”, The Orwell Society Newsletter 1 (January 2012) 11-13
CONFERENCE KEYNOTE ADDRESSES, PLENARY PAPERS AND INVITED LECTURES
“Leonard Woolf and I: a case of colonial discourse”: Plenary Address, International Conference on Discourse Analysis, University of Macau, 1997
“Discipline Wars”: Conference on University English Departments in the Chinese Context in the 21st Century, ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong, 1999
“British Fiction at the Scene of the Crime”: Keynote Address, British Fiction since the Second World War, English Literature Association of China, Suzhou University, 1998
“The Perfect Crime: Ideology and Naturalization”, invited lecture, PekingUniversity, 2000
“The Walrus and the Carpenter: conservative and liberal imperialists”, invited lecture, Lancaster University Victorian Studies Seminar, 2000
“London Calling: Orwell, Empire and the BBC”: Plenary paper, Empire and After, Royal Holloway, LondonUniversity, 2001
“The Orient and Beyond”, University of Macau, invited public lecture, 2002
“Don Quixote: the Only Western Novel”, public lecture, NortheasternUniversity, 2004
“Death’s Other Kingdom: Ruins in the Jungle”: Plenary session, Victorians and the Other, University of Auckland, 2005
“A Quarter Century of English Studies”, invited public lecture, SichuanUniversity, 2006
“A Century of Travels in China” (with Dr J. Kuehn), invited illustrated lectures, Asia Society, Hong Kong, 2007; Shenzhen Asian Culture Society 2007; Royal Asiatic Society of Hong Kong 2008
“Good Writing in English” (with Elaine Yee Lin Ho), Meeting of Minds public lecture series, FudanUniversity, Shanghai, 2008, QinghuaUniversity, Beijing, 2009.
“Buchan, Myth and Modernism”, Keynote Address, John Buchan and the Idea of Modernity, Institute of English Studies, University of London, 2010
“Orwell, Kipling, Empire, Race”, plenary session, George Orwell: Asian and Global Perspectives, TunghaiUniversity, Taichung 2011
“Into print: A research journey”, invited lecture, Hong Kong Institute of Education, 2012
OTHER INVITED LECTURESgiven at Shenzhen University (1987), Zhongshan University (1990), Macau University (1992), Oxford University English Faculty Victorian Studies Seminar (1994), Oxford University English Faculty Twentieth Century Studies Seminar (1994), Macau University (1995), Hangzhou University (1995), Nanjing University (1997), Macau University (1997), Zhongshan University (1998), Royal Holloway, London University (2001), Zhejiang University (2004), Leshan Normal University (2006), Chinese University of Hong Kong (2007), Hong Kong Baptist University (2009), Macau University (2009).
CONFERENCE PAPERS DELIVERED
“The Revenge of Madame Butterfly”: Asian Voices in English, University of Hong Kong, 1990.
“Teaching the Orient”: Teaching English as a Second Language: the Role of Literature, University of Macau, 1991.
“Orientations: James Fenton and Cambodia”: Nationalism versus Internationalism: Conference of the European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, University of Graz, Austria, 1993.
“Disorientations: Isherwood’s China”: 34th International Congress of Asian and North African Studies, Hong Kong, 1993.
“Crowds in Conrad”: New Approaches to Conrad, Centre for English Studies, University of London, 1994.
20th International Conference on Conrad, Polish Cultural Centre, London, 1994.
“Colonial Habitats: Orwell and Woolf in the Jungle”: A View of Our Own: Ethnocentric Perspectives in Literature, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1994.
“Stories of the East: Discourse and Genre in Leonard Woolf’s Colonial Narratives”: Society for the Study of Narrative Literature 10th Anniversary Conference, OhioStateUniversity, 1996.
“Three Tales and a History”: 22nd International Conference on Conrad, Polish Cultural Centre, London, 1996.
“Three ways of going wrong: Kipling, Conrad, Coetzee”: Heart of Darkness Centenary Conference: Modernism, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, Universities of Potchefstroom and Cape Town, 1998.
Invited participant, Round-table Conference on Teaching English Majors in Comprehensive Universities in China, Universities of Fudan (Shanghai) and Nanjing1998.
Interview with Romesh Gunesekera, Eye on Books Festival, British Council, Hong Kong, 1998.
“A Passage to Kowloon Tong: Paul Theroux and Hong Kong 1997”: Sharing a Commonwealth; 11th Triennial Conference of the Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, Kuala Lumpur, 1998.
“Timothy Mo’s Man Sundae”: Complicities: Connections and Divisions; Ninth Biennial Symposium on Literatures and Cultures of the Asia-Pacific Region, National University of Singapore, 1999.
“Kipling and the Missionaries”: Postcolonial Kipling, MagdaleneCollege, CambridgeUniversity, 2001.
“Mission Statements”: International Symposium on Higher Education and the Humanities, Hong KongUniversity, 2002. (Member of organizing committee)
“Magic Circles”: Conrad and Territoriality, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 2002.
“Not Knowing the Oriental”: Knowledge and Nation: AULLA 32nd Congress, VictoriaUniversity of Wellington, 2003.
“Writing and genre in The Quiet American”: Graham Greene Centennial Conference, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and SalamancaUniversity, 2004.
“Tales of Empire and the Interior”: 13th Triennial Conference of the Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, Hyderabad, 2004.
“The Eastern Crowd”: The First Cross-Cultural Research Group Symposium, Hong KongUniversity, 2004.(Symposium convenor)
“Poetics to Rhetoric and back”:First International Conference on Discourse and Cultural Transformation, School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, 2004.
“Typhoon: Chinese Boxes”:Joseph Conrad in Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, 2005.
“Ruins in the Jungle: Nature and Narrative”:Mobilis in Mobile: International Conference on Travel Writing, University of Hong Kong, 2005.
The Second Cross-Cultural Research Group Symposium, Hong KongUniversity, 2006. (Symposium convenor)
Thinking Common Problems: A Literary Critical Symposium, organized by the editorial collective of boundary2 and HKU English Department, Hong KongUniversity, 2006. Rapporteur.
“Stealing Victory?: Conrad and Buchan”: 32nd Annual Conference of the Joseph Conrad Society, London, 2006.
“Conan Doyle and Pugilism”: Victorian Beginnings – AVSA 2007 Conference, University of Western Australia, Perth, 2007.
“Really Telling Lies: Conrad, Conan Doyle, and Invention”: 33rd International Conference of the Joseph Conrad Society, London, 2007.
“Deep China: A Travelling Metaphor”: International Conference on East-West Studies, University of Hong Kong, 2007.
“Cross-Cultural Studies in Hong Kong”: 10th Round Table on English Major Education in Comprehensive Universities in China, Nanjing University, 2007.
“Locating Louise Ho”: Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image, University of Hong Kong, 2007.
Conversation with Anne Enright: “The Gathering: An Anne Enright Gala Event”, Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival, 2008.
“Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Cold Consultant”: The Arts and Culture in Victorian Britain, NAVSA annual conference, YaleUniversity, 2008.
“What the consultant saw”: The Victorian Sensorium, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, 2009.
Conversation with Rana Dasgupta: Life and Daydreams, Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival, 2009.
“Coming Ashore: Conrad Changes the Subject”: Changing the Subject, University of Adelaide, Australia, 2011
Conversation with Andrew Motion: Poetry and More, Hong Kong International Literary Festival, 2011
Conversation with Jessica Rudd: High Heels and Politics, Hong Kong International Literary Festival, 2011