Andrew Milner Australian cultural theorist and literary critic, is Professor of Comparative Literature

Comparative literature

Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...

 and Cultural Studies

Cultural studies

Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...

 at Monash University

Monash University

Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....

.

Milner was born in Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

, UK, the son of John Milner and Dorothy Ibbotson. He was educated at Batley Grammar School

Batley Grammar School

Batley Grammar School is a co-educational school located at Carlinghow Hill in Upper Batley, West Yorkshire, England. The school was founded in 1612 by the Rev. William Lee...

 and later at the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

, where he studied Sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

. 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

Verity Burgmann

Verity Burgmann is Professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne.Burgmann was born in Sydney, Australia, the daughter of Victor Burgmann and Lorna Bradbury. In 1971 she ran away from home to attend the London School of Economics, where she completed a B.Sc with a major in politics...

, the Australian political scientist and labour historian, in 1977. They have three sons.

Milner was politically active, by turn, in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...

, the Labour Party Young Socialists

Labour Party Young Socialists

The Labour Party Young Socialists was the name of the youth section of the British Labour Party from 1965 until 1993. The LPYS was the most successful of the youth sections of the Labour Party in the post war period, at one point having nearly 600 branches and attendances at its national...

, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign

Vietnam Solidarity Campaign

The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign was originally set up in 1966 by activists around the International Group with the personal and financial support of Bertrand Russell....

, the International Socialists, the Socialist Workers Party (Britain)

Socialist Workers Party (Britain)

The Socialist Workers Party is a far left party in Britain founded by Tony Cliff. The SWP's student section has groups at a number of universities...

 and, in Australia, People for Nuclear Disarmament. In the early 21st century he appears to have joined the Australian Greens

Australian Greens

The Australian Greens, commonly known as The Greens, is an Australian green political party.The party was formed in 1992; however, its origins can be traced to the early environmental movement in Australia and the formation of the United Tasmania Group , the first Green party in the world, which...

.

Milner's academic interests include contemporary cultural theory, the sociology of literature, utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

, dystopia

Dystopia

A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

 and science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

. His work has been published in English in Australia, India, the US and the UK and has been translated into German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

, Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

, Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 and Korean

Korean language

Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

. He first attracted attention for work, strongly influenced by Lucien Goldmann

Lucien Goldmann

Lucien Goldmann was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin...

, on the sociology of 17th-century literature. Subsequently he has become better known for his advocacy of Raymond Williams

Raymond Williams

Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts...

'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

Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...

.

Career

Andrew Milner began his academic career teaching Sociology at the London School of Economics in 1972. He subsequently taught in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, in Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds

University of Leeds

The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...

 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 University of Warwick

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

, the Theory, Culture and Society Centre at Nottingham Trent University

Nottingham Trent University

Nottingham Trent University is a public teaching and research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as a new university in 1992 from the existing Trent Polytechnic , however it can trace its roots back to 1843 with the establishment of the Nottingham Government School of Design...

 and the School of English at the University of Liverpool

University of Liverpool

The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...

.

Selected bibliography

• Milner, A., M. Ryan and R. Savage (eds) Imagining the Future: Utopia and Dystopia, Arena Publications, Melbourne, 2006.
• Milner, A. Literature, Culture and Society, second edition, Routledge, London and New York, 2005.
• Milner, A. (ed.) Postwar British Critical Thought, Volume One: Old Right and New Left, Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, 2005.
• Milner, A. (ed.) Postwar British Critical Thought, Volume Two: New Theory, Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, 2005.
• Milner, A. (ed.) Postwar British Critical Thought, Volume Three: New Politics, Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, 2005.
• Milner, A. (ed.) Postwar British Critical Thought, Volume Four: New Times, Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, 2005.
• Milner, A. and J. Browitt Contemporary Cultural Theory: An Introduction, third edition, Routledge, London and New York, 2002.
• Milner, A. Re-Imagining Cultural Studies: The Promise of Cultural Materialism, Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, 2002.
• Milner, A. Class, Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, 1999.
• Milner, A. Literature, Culture and Society, University College London Press, London, 1996.
• Milner, A. Contemporary Cultural Theory: An Introduction, second edition, University College London Press, London, 1994.
• Milner, A. Cultural Materialism, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1993.
• Milner, A. Contemporary Cultural Theory: An Introduction, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1991.
• Milner, A., P. Thomson and C. Worth (eds) Postmodern Conditions, Berg, Oxford, 1990.
• Milner, A. and C. Worth (eds) Discourse and Difference: Post-Structuralism, Feminism and the Moment of History, Centre for General and Comparative Literature, Monash University, Melbourne, 1990.
• Milner, A. The Road to St. Kilda Pier: George Orwell and the Politics of the Australian Left, Stained Wattle Press, Sydney, 1984.
• Milner, A. John Milton and the English Revolution: A Study in the Sociology of Literature, Macmillan, London, 1981.