Professor Paul Giles

Paul Giles is a member of the US Studies Centre's International Academic Advisory Committee. Giles is the Challis Professor of English at the University of Sydney. He was born in London, obtained his BA and D. Phil. degrees from Oxford University, and then taught for seven years in Portland, Oregon, at Portland State University and Reed College. On returning to the UK in 1994, he worked at the University of Nottingham (1994-99) and the University of Cambridge (1999-2002), before returning to Oxford as Professor of American Literature (2002-09). He also served as Director of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford between 2003 and 2008.

Most of his research has focused upon transnational approaches to American literature and culture. Among his books are: The Global Remapping of American Literature (Princeton UP, 2011); Transnationalism in Practice: Essays on American Studies, Literature and Religion (Edinburgh UP, 2010); Atlantic Republic: The American Tradition in English Literature (Oxford UP, 2006); Virtual Americas: Transnational Fictions and the Transatlantic Imaginary (Duke UP, 2002); Transatlantic Insurrections: British Culture and the Formation of American Literature, 1730-1860 (U of Pennsylvania P, 2001); American Catholic Arts and Fictions: Culture, Ideology, Aesthetics (Cambridge UP, 1992); Hart Crane: The Contexts of The Bridge (Cambridge UP, 1986). He also served as President of the International American Studies Association from 2005 to 2007.

He moved to the University of Sydney in 2010, and is currently principal investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project entitled "Antipodean America: Australasia and the Constitution of U.S. Literature."