Background
Williams, Mark J. was born on April 16, 1951 in Hayward, California, United States.
Williams, Mark J. was born on April 16, 1951 in Hayward, California, United States.
University of Utah (Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, 1974. Juris Doctor, 1977). Phi Beta Kappa. Phi Kappa Phi.; spoken languages: Dutch.
He is Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington. "At midday we all knelt for the Angelus. Mass involved long periods of kneeling".
Although he feels he escaped "the deep imprinting on the psyche of Catholic guilt", Williams was captivated by "those gothic images and rigid doctrines".
"An absolute scale of values and vision is insinuated into one"s mind" which may account "for the number of Catholics who become writers or artists". While at, Williams started writing poetry and while there he entered a poetry contest judged by old boy poet Sam Hunt who wrote to him in response to his entry.
Williams returned to New Zealand from his doctoral studies in British Columbia (1983) and lectured at Auckland University and Waikato University before moving to the University of Canterbury where he was a lecturer and associate professor He joined the English faculty at Victoria University of Wellington in 2008 and is now Professor of English there.
Williams" research focuses on New Zealand and modern literature.
He is on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals, including the Journal of Commonwealth Literature and Canadian Literature. In 2009 he was the convenor of the judging panel for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. With others, he is currently engaged in the editing of The World Novel to 1950, a volume of Oxford University Press series, The History of the Novel in English.
Mark Williams is one of the first academics to focus his publications predominantly on contemporary New Zealand writing.
His work is also informed by a strong international context which has enabled him to argue in Leaving the Highway: Six Contemporary New Zealand Novelists (1990) against the "violent dualities" of New Zealand culture and the "binary habits of New Zealand criticism" and advocate instead independence, difference, continuities, and "complex wholeness".
Member: Utah State Bar. Defense Research Institute. Utah Defense Association (President, 1993-1994).