Ransom Center Magazine

David Attwell

Recent publications

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Alison Frazier_The Saint Between Manuscript and PrintAlison K. Frazier, Editor
The Saint between Manuscript and Print in Italy, 1400–1600
University of Toronto Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, July 2015

The 12 essays in this volume identify mutually interactive developments in media and saints’ cults at a time and in a place when both underwent profound change. Focusing on the Italian peninsula between 1400 and 1600, authors analyze specific sites of intense cultural production and innovation. The volume invites further study of saints of all sorts—canonized, popularly recognized, or self-proclaimed—in the fluid media environment of early modernity. [Read more…] about Recent publications

Research at the Ransom Center: “To Cape Town and back, via Mongolia”

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A portrait of J. M. Coetzee taken during his visit to The University of Texas at Austin in May 2010. Photo by Marsha Miller.
A portrait of J. M. Coetzee taken during his visit to The University of Texas at Austin in May 2010. Photo by Marsha Miller.

Perhaps one of the most distinctive features of J. M. Coetzee’s 1981 novel Waiting for the Barbarians is the setting—an imaginary empire, one lacking a specified place and time. Yet, when Coetzee penned the first draft of the novel, it was set in Cape Town, South Africa.

David Attwell, a Professor of English at the University of York in the U.K., provides an in-depth look at the development of Coetzee’s third novel. He visited the Ransom Center this year to explore Coetzee’s archive.

Coetzee, who was born in Cape Town and graduated from the University of Cape Town, enrolled in The University of Texas at Austin in 1965 to pursue his Ph.D. in English, linguistics, and Germanic languages.