Andrew Milner

Andrew Milner (born 9 September 1950), Australian cultural theorist and literary critic, is Professor of Cultural Studies at Monash University.

Milner was born in Leeds, UK, the son of John Milner and Dorothy Ibbotson. He was educated at Batley Grammar School and later at the London School of Economics, where he studied Sociology. He graduated with a B.Sc (Econ) degree, with honours in Sociology, in 1972 and a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1977. He married Verity Burgmann, the Australian political scientist and labour historian, in 1978. They have three sons.

Milner was politically active, by turn, in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Labour Party Young Socialists, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, the International Socialists, the Socialist Workers Party and, in Australia, People for Nuclear Disarmament.

Milner’s academic interests include contemporary cultural theory, the sociology of literature, utopia, dystopia and science fiction. His work has been published in English in Australia, Germany, India, the USA and the UK and has been translated into Chinese, Farsi, Korean and Portuguese. He first attracted attention for work, strongly influenced by Lucien Goldmann, on the sociology of seventeenth-century literature. Subsequently he has become better known for his advocacy of Raymond Williams’s cultural materialism and for studies of utopian and dystopian science fiction. He also has a strong interest in the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.

Career

Andrew Milner began his academic career teaching Sociology at the London School of Economics in 1972. He subsequently taught in Sociology at Goldsmiths College London, in Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds and in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University, where he has held a chair since 2000. He was Director of the Centre 2001-3 and has been Deputy Director since 2004. He also held visiting appointments in the Centre for Philosophy and Literature at Warwick University, the Theory, Culture and Society Centre at Nottingham Trent University and the School of English at the University of Liverpool.

A selection of writings by Andrew Milner

• Literature, Culture and Society, Routledge, London and New York, 2005.

• Re-Imagining Cultural Studies, Sage, London, 2002.

• (with Jeff Browitt) Contemporary Cultural Theory, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2002; US edition: Routledge, New York. UK edition: Routledge, London.

• Class: Core Cultural Concepts, Sage, London, 1999.

• Cultural Materialism, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1993.

• The Road to St. Kilda Pier: George Orwell and the Politics of the Australian Left, Stained Wattle Press, Sydney, 1984.

• John Milton and the English Revolution: A Study in the Sociology of Literature, Macmillan, London, 1981.

Edited works

• Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan and Robert Savage (eds), Imagining the Future: Utopia and Dystopia, Arena Publications, Melbourne, 2006.

• Postwar British Critical Thought, 4 volumes: Old Right and New Left Sage, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, 2005.

• Andrew Milner, Philip Thomson and Chris Worth (eds), Postmodern Conditions, Berg, Oxford, 1990.

• Andrew Milner and Chris Worth (eds), Discourse and Difference: Post-Structuralism, Feminism and the Moment of History, Centre for General and Comparative Literature, Monash University, Melbourne, 1990.

References

Andrew Milner Monash webpage