I am an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of the Free State (Bloemfontein, South Africa). I hold research fellowships at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS). I am the author of Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) and I have written many articles and book chapters on modernism and contemporary literature. At STIAS, I will complete my second monograph, provisionally titled Ctrl Z: Narratives of Undoing. My debut novel, Blot, will be out in October 2026.Â
- Nationality
- 🇿🇦 South Africa
- Affiliation
- Department of English, University of the Free State, South Africa
- Field of study
- Languages, Linguistics and Literature
- Residencies at STIAS
- 2027 2nd Semester 2025 2nd Semester
Related to this person
publication
Blot
The directorship of the Bureau of Dead Letters is changing, and not everyone is happy about it... especially the outgoing Director. Despite promising first impressions, the country’s new chief censor has been acting strangely. Is he too unstable to be trusted with the nation’s most sensitive materials? What is the new Director’s private, puzzling agenda?
publication
The Structure of Scientific Recantations: Cormac McCarthy and the Literary Tradition of Scientific Regret
De Villiers, R. 2026. The Structure of Scientific Recantations: Cormac McCarthy and the Literary Tradition of Scientific Regret. New Literary History, 57(2), 293–317.
public lecture / seminar
The literary tradition of scientific recantation - Fellows' seminar by Rick de Villiers
In this seminar, I consider the broad features of a literary tradition that obsesses over the inner lives of scientists after 1945.