Daniel G. Williams – författare

Beyond the Difference is a celebration of the work of Wales's leading literary critic M. Wynn Thomas, with contributions from internationally acclaimed writers and poets, as well as significant critics working in the field. Looking initially at the relationships between the English and Welsh language literatures of Wales, the volume proceeds to explore the interactions of nationhood and gender from the late nineteenth century to the present day, the politics of translation in Wales as compared to Ireland and America, and the intriguing connections between Welsh literature and American, African American, Irish and Jewish literary traditions.

Williams analyses and compares the ways in which African Americans and the Welsh have defined themselves as minorities within larger nation states (the UK and US). The study is grounded in examples of actual friendships and cultural exchanges between African Americans and the Welsh, such as Paul Robeson's connections with the socialists of the Welsh mining communities, and novelist Ralph Ellison's stories about his experiences as a GI stationed in wartime Swansea. This wide ranging book draws on literary, historical, visual and musical sources to open up new avenues of research in Welsh and African American studies.

Longlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2007 Writing in 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois suggested that the goal for the African-American was ‘to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture'.He was evoking ‘culture’ as a solution to the divisions within society, thereby adopting, in a very different context, an idea that had been influentially expressed by Matthew Arnold in the 1860s. Du Bois questioned the assumed universality of this concept by asking who, ultimately, is allowed into the ‘kingdom of culture’? How does one come to speak from a position of cultural authority?This book adopts a transatlantic approach to explore these questions. It centres on four Victorian ‘men of letters’ – Matthew Arnold, William Dean Howells, W. B. Yeats and W. E. B. Du Bois – who drew on notions of ethnicity as a basis from which to assert their cultural authority. In comparative close readings of these figures Daniel Williams addresses several key areas of contemporary literary and cultural debate. The book questions the notion of ‘the West’ as it appears and re-appears in the formulations of postcolonial theory, challenges the widespread tendency to divide nationalism into ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ forms, and forces its readers to reconsider what they mean when they talk about ‘culture’, ‘identity’ and ‘national literature’. Key Features*Offers a substantial, innovative intervention in transatlantic debates over race and ethnicity*Uses 4 intriguing authors to explore issues of national identity, racial purity and the use of literature as a marker of ‘cultural capital’*A unique focus on Celtic identity in a transatlantic context*Sets up a dialogue between writers who believe in national identity and those who believe in cultural distinctiveness

Born in Silesia, raised in the Frankfurt area and educated in Berlin, Werner Sollors has spent most of his career at Harvard University in the United States and is regarded, in Cornel West's words, 'as one of the finest scholars that we have on race and cultural hybridity in both this country and the world'. This Reader offers the first comprehensive overview of the work of a central figure in the field of ethnic studies. The pieces collected here range from Puritan New England to contemporary Germany, from 'Exodus' to Mary Antin's Promised Land, from the 'Curse of Ham' to Teju Cole. They attest to Sollors' deep historical sensibilities, his attention to textual detail and his awareness of the costs and opportunities of both cosmopolitan ideals and particularist commitments, whilst addressing a central question: why does modernisation take the form of ethnicisation in many places around the globe?The collected essays are complemented by a detailed introduction by Daniel G. Williams which foregrounds some of the key emphases and tensions in Sollors' writings.

Born in Silesia, raised in the Frankfurt area and educated in Berlin, Werner Sollors has spent most of his career at Harvard University in the United States and is regarded, in Cornel West’s words, ‘as one of the finest scholars that we have on race and cultural hybridity in both this country and the world’. This Reader offers the first comprehensive overview of the work of a central figure in the field of ethnic studies. The pieces collected here range from Puritan New England to contemporary Germany, from ‘Exodus’ to Mary Antin’s Promised Land, from the ‘Curse of Ham’ to Teju Cole. They attest to Sollors’ deep historical sensibilities, his attention to textual detail and his awareness of the costs and opportunities of both cosmopolitan ideals and particularist commitments, whilst addressing a central question: why does modernisation take the form of ethnicisation in many places around the globe?The collected essays are complemented by a detailed introduction by Daniel G. Williams which foregrounds some of the key emphases and tensions in Sollors’ writings.

In Wales Unchained Daniel G. Williams explores how Welsh writers, politicians and intellectuals have defined themselves – and have been defined by others – since the early twentieth century. Whether by exploring ideas of race in the 1930s or reflecting on the metaphoric uses of boxing, asking what it means to inhabit the ‘American century’ or probing the linguistic bases of cultural identity, Williams writes with a rare blend of theoretical sophistication and accessible clarity. This book discusses Rhys Davies in relation to D. H. Lawrence, explores the simultaneous impact that Dylan Thomas and saxophonist Charlie Parker had on the Beat Generation in 1950s America, and juxtaposes the uses made of class and ethnicity in the thought of Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson. Transatlantic in scope and comparative in method, this book will engage readers interested in literature, politics, history and contemporary cultural debate.

In the words of Cornel West, Raymond Williams was 'the last of the great European male revolutionary socialist intellectuals'. A figure of international importance in the fields of cultural criticism and social theory, Williams was also preoccupied throughout his life with the meaning and significance of his Welsh identity. Who Speaks for Wales? was the first collection of Raymond Williams's writings on Welsh culture, literature, history and politics. Published in 2003, it appeared in the early years of Welsh political devolution and offered a historical and theoretical basis for thinking across the divisions of nationalism and socialism in Welsh thought. This edition, appearing in the centenary of Williams's birth, appears at a very different moment in which - after the Brexit referendum of 2016 - Raymond Williams's 'Welsh-European' vision seems to have been soundly rejected and is now a reminder of what might have been. This new edition includes material that was not included in the first edition, with a new afterword in which the editor argues that Williams continues to speak to our moment. Daniel G. Williams's new edition further underlines the ways in which Raymond Williams's engagement with Welsh issues makes a significant contribution to contemporary international debates on nationalism, class and ethnicity. Who Speaks for Wales? remains essential reading for everyone interested in questions of nationhood and identity in Britain and beyond.

An edited collection of essays, interviews, and book reviews by M. Wynn Thomas.For more than half a century, M. Wynn Thomas has been Wales’s foremost literary critic. His ground-breaking work – on subjects ranging from Welsh Puritanism to Walt Whitman, from religious Dissent to contemporary poetry – has opened up new vistas and literary correspondences for his readers. Thomas’s writings combine a deep historical knowledge, a commitment to pluralism and a relationship to the literary text that is both sympathetic in approach and detailed in analysis.Made up of previously unpublished and uncollected essays, interviews, and reviews on Welsh and American writers, the writings in Transatlantic Vistas engage with some of the abiding interests of Thomas’s career: Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas, R. S. Thomas, and American authors such as Charles Bukowski, Rita Dove, Anne Stevenson and more. Including a foreword by Helen Vendler and essays by Daniel G. Williams and Kirsti Bohata, this volume celebrates M. Wynn Thomas’s immense contribution as a literary and intellectual historian, critic, translator, lecturer, institution builder, editor, broadcaster and literary executor as he enters his eightieth year.