John A. Williams
- Associate Professor (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1963)
- Research Interests
- My research is on South Africa 1880-1930. It centers around the debates going on among Europeans, among Africans, and in between, about controlling and shaping "what kind of place South Africa is going to become. It centers around the defeat of liberalism in the 1930s but will conclude with the way liberal ideas come back after the defeat of the apartheid regime. My theoretical perspective on this stems from several sources, especially Raymond Williams. More broadly, I am interested in the point of contact between colonizer and colonized during colonial rule. This involves mutual cultural influence and borrowing, conversion and conversion in reverse. The perspectives I rely on in this work are Jack Goody, J. D. Y. Peel, Robin Horton, and Ernest Gellner. Some of this will be comparative work, drawing on cases from the Pacific, Canada, possibly India, as well as South Africa.
- Publications
- Classroom in Conflict: Teaching Controversial Subjects in a Diverse Society (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
- E-Mail
- john.williams@sunysb.edu
- Office
- SBS N-327
- Phone
- 631-632-7512
- Fax
- 631-632-7367