Simon During

Simon During (born 1950) is a New Zealand born academic who completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge. In 1983, he joined the English Department at the University of Melbourne as a tutor, where, ten years later and after visiting positions at the University of Auckland and the Rhetoric Dept, UC Berkeley, he was appointed to the Robert Wallace chair. After establishing the Cultural Studies, Media and Communications and Publishing programs at Melbourne, he left for Johns Hopkins University in 2001, and taught in the English department there for nine years.
Since 2010 he has been a Research Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland as well as holding visiting positions at the Frei Universität Berlin, Universität Tübingen, the American Academy of Rome, the University of Cambridge, Université de Paris and elsewhere.
His work contributes to the study of British literary history, literary and cultural theory, postcolonialism, secularism, Australian and New Zealand literatures, and has been translated into many languages.
His books include Foucault and Literature (Routledge 1991) Patrick White (Oxford 1994), Exit Capitalism, literary culture, theory and post-secular modernity (Routledge 2010) and, most recently, Against Democracy: literary experience in the era of emancipations (Fordham 2012). His anthology The Cultural Studies Reader is a standard textbook in the field. Perhaps his most well known book is Modern Enchantments: The Cultural and Secular Power of Magic (2002), which explores the history of magic. It has had a wide impact.
His current research mainly addresses relations between Anglicanism and literature between 1688 and 1945.

• The Cultural Studies Reader (1993)
• Foucault and Literature (1993)
• Patrick White (1996)
• Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (2002)
• Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction (2005)
• The Cultural Studies Reader: Third Expanded Edition (2007)
• Exit Capitalism: Literary Culture, Theory and Post-Secular Modernity (2009)
• Against Democracy: Literary Experience in the Era of Emancipations (2012)