CURRICULUM VITAE
ACADEMIC/PROFESSIONAL CAREER
1965-1967: Undergraduate degree (BA), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Majors: English, Afrikaans; Sub-majors: Social Anthropology; Sociology, History of Music)
1968: Higher Education Diploma at the Johannesburg College of Education (JCE). First recipient of Linder Memorial Prize for a published student article (in Transvaal Teachers Association Journal)
1969-1976: Secondary school teacher (English: mainly senior standards/grades) at Benoni High School). Coach: drama; hockey.
1972: Honours (English) (passed cum laude), University of South Africa
1976: Masters (English) (passed cum laude), University of South Africa; thesis on plays of Harold Pinter (1958-1972) (Supervisor: Prof. Ian Ferguson)
1977-1978: Lecturer at University of South Africa, where I was working on my doctoral thesis
1979: Appointed lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch
1983: Doctorate on the work of Ben Jonson and John Dryden – English classicism before and after the Civil War and Interregnum, University of South Africa (Promoter: Prof. Leon Hugo)
1989: Appointed Senior lecturer, Department of English, University of Stellenbosch
1995: One of the group of first recipients of newly instituted Award for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Stellenbosch
1999: Guest professorship at Institute for English and American Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria. (Teaching courses on SA Writing)
2001: Guest professorship at Institute for English and American Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria. (Teaching courses on SA Writing)
2003: Guest professorship at Institute for English and American Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria. (Teaching courses on SA Writing).
(Invited to give series of lectures/presentation at University of Vienna on similar topic)
2005: Appointed Associate Professor at Drama Department, University of Stellenbosch, with key function: postgraduate supervision.
25 April: Adjudicator – Inter-House Play Festival, Fairmont High School, Durbanville
29 April – 1 May: Paper read at Film Studies Colloquium, University of Cape Town, “Proteus: Time for a Change?”
Invited to submit chapter to book The Masking of South African Cinema and Television ed by Jyoti Mistry and Florian Schattauer (“Ways of Remembering: Realism in Proteus”)
Invited by Maskew Miller Longman to write Introduction to Fugard’s Valley Song (Afrikaans ed. to be prepared for schools)
31 July – Talk on Hamlet at Reading Group (“Boekwurm”) Open Day, Stellenbosch
Oct 2005 – Jan 2006: Fourth invitation as guest lecturer at Institute of English and American Studies, University of Salzburg. Present two courses: “Shakespeare in a postcolonial context” and “South African drama and filmmaking after 1994”.
OTHER COMMITMENTS/PROJECTS
One of a panel of judges in the Western Cape region for the prestigious FNB VITA Awards for Drama (until 1999); freelance editor, translator and language consultant for the University of Stellenbosch as well as for several firms in Stellenbosch; occasional theatre reviewer for The Cape Times and Shakespeare in Southern Africa (the Journal of the Southern African Shakespeare Society).
On Editorial Board of Critical Arts: A Journal for Cultural Studies (edited by Prof. Keyan Tomaselli; Centre for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban) (until 2000).
Issue Editor/Guest Editor/Associate Editor, South African Theatre Journal (SATJ) (edited by Prof. Temple Hauptfleisch, Head: Drama Department, University of Stellenbosch).
On Editorial Board of Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa (JMAA) (edited by Prof. Anri Herbst, School of Music, University of Cape Town)
Assistant: Companion to South African Theatre, a comprehensive encyclopaedia on South African theatre; there is no similar research tool available at present; work done in collaboration with drama departments all over South Africa.
External Examiner and/or Moderator: University of Cape Town; University of the Free State; University of Natal, Durban; University of the Witwatersrand.
Teach one component of Postgraduate Translation Diploma and M.Phil. (Practical Translation from Afrikaans into English) in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of Stellenbosch (1988-- )
Teach film and SA Drama courses in the Drama Department at the University of Stellenbosch on a regular basis (until appointment to Department in 2005).
While at English Department, taught and co-ordinated classes on a broad range of South African literary themes to visiting foreign students in collaboration with the International Office, University of Stellenbosch
Present freelance language editing and translation workshops on a regular basis locally and nationally.
PUBLICATIONS
“Unity of Vision in Ben Jonson’s Tragedies and Masques”, Theoria LXVII, October 1986.
“Dryden’s Jacobitism: ‘That Hard Necessity’”, English Studies in Africa, 29:2, 1986.
The National Film Board of South Africa: A Short History (monograph), University of Stellenbosch Annale series, 1991/1.
“’Truly the ways of the white man are strange’: tribal utopianism in two South African propaganda films”, South African Theatre Journal, 10:2, 1991.
“Film in Africa and South Africa” (review article), Critical Arts, 7:1, 1993.
The Voortrekkers on Film: From Preller to pornography”, Critical Arts 10:1 1996.
“Third Cinema”, Social Dynamics, 2:2, 1996.
“John Grierson in South Africa” (co-authored with Keyan Tomaselli), Screening the Past (electronic journal)
“The Birth of a Nation: Contextualising De Voortrekkers (1916)”, chapter in a book on South African film, To Change Reels (eds Isabel Balseiro and Ntongela Masilela). Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003.
“Metaphern der Sexualität in Proteus”, Wespennest (Vienna)142.2, March 2006, 70-73.
“Proteus and the dialectics of history”, chapter in Marginal Lives and Painful Pasts (compiled by Martin Botha), Parklands, Cape Town: Genugtig! Publishers, 2007.
Reviews in South African Theatre Journal, Critical Arts and English Academy Review.
REPORTS
Dramatic Theory in Southern Africa: A Collection of Writings with an Analytical Summary (Human Sciences Research Council 1991).
The methodology of visual literacy (especially film) at secondary school level in South Africa, with specific reference to testing/assessment procedures (Centre for Science Development, HSRC, 1998).
CONFERENCES
Paper presented at conference Two Centuries of British Cultural Influence in South Africa, 1775-1995, organised by the South Africa Society for Cultural History, Pretoria, 29-30 June 1995. (Selected for publication in Conference proceedings)
Paper read at Literature, History, Film conference entitled “Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country and Hans Strydom’s The Fourth Reich”; University of West Virginia, USA, October 1996.
Paper read at conference at Salzburg University, Tale, Novella, Short Story: Currents in Short Fiction, Nov 1-4 2001. Paper title: "A Semiotic Analysis of a Film Adaptation of an Ambrose Bierce Story". (Selected for publication in Conference Proceedings)
Paper Read at Film Studies Colloquium, Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town, 29 April – 1 May; paper entitled “Proteus: Time for a Change?”
Paper read at Conference Theatre and the Media (“Institut für Theater- und Medienwissenschaft”, University of Erlangen-Nuremburg, Germany), 12-15 October 2006. Paper title: “Reading Classical Drama on Film”.
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Visiting professor at the Institute for English and American Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria, April-June 1999:
Lecture course: “South African fiction: the historical context”
Graduate seminar: “South African Theatre and Performance: Resistance, Protest, Reconciliation”
Both courses were taught with the aid of fairly detailed supplementary visual material (historical documentaries; discussions on videotape; feature films; performances on videotape).
Invited for a second time to lecture on South African Writing at the Institute for English and American Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria, November-December 2001.
Lecture course: “South African Writing: The 1980s and 1990s”
Third invitation to teach a seminar course on current South African Writing (Gordimer, Brink, Coetzee) at the Institute for English and American Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria, November-December 2003. On this occasion also invited to present two lectures at the Institute for English and American Studies at the University of Vienna and to address the “Friends of South Africa” in Vienna on contemporary South African film.
Oct 2005 – Jan 2006: Fourth invitation as guest lecturer at Institute of English and American Studies, University of Salzburg. Present two courses: “Shakespeare in a postcolonial context” and “South African drama and filmmaking after 1994”.
MAJOR FIELDS OF RESEARCH
Film Studies (with a strong, but not exclusive, emphasis on the South African film industry), Modern American Drama, The History of English Drama – Renaissance to the Present; South African Theatre and Performance. The orientation is predominantly that associated with “cultural studies”. These research interests find expression in undergraduate and postgraduate seminars and lectures as well as in supervision at masters and doctoral levels; my publication record on South African film, in particular, reflects a very conscious and deliberate decision to extend the field of enquiry in a neglected area of South African scholarship.
Prof Edwin Hees
