Globetrotting English professor lands in Madison

Upon his 1999 invitation to interview for a faculty position in the English Department, Rob Nixon was known in academic circles as a talented writer with an academic specialty in British and postcolonial literatures.

So it came as a bit of a shock to the search committee conducting his interview when he launched into a talk on environmental politics in contemporary American writing ? and proceeded to “charm the bifocals off his colleagues to be,” says Betsy Draine, English Department associate chair.

It was probably the last time anyone made the mistake of pigeon-holing the South African-born Nixon, who defies labels as a writer and professor with specialties in British, environmental and post-colonial literatures ? and ostriches.

A world traveler and something of a nomad, he’s also conversant in topics ranging from U.S. oil policy to the woods of Upper Peninsula Michigan to native South African rock art. His thoughtful essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education and The New York Times.

Nixon may never have become a writer or traveled thousands of miles to Madison but for his home country’s social upheaval over apartheid. His original career plan was to become a high school teacher specializing in African languages. But after graduating from Rhodes University in 1977, he faced the choice of mandatory conscription into the South African military, jail or exile abroad.

To avoid serving the regime of P.W. Botha, in 1979 he departed for London and began writing about his home for influential publications such as The Nation and the Village Voice. He continued to write and globetrot, spending years in London and New York, while also earning degrees at Columbia University and the University of Iowa.

“I think I compiled something like 17 addresses in 20 years,” he says, joking that his family is famous for its “mobile genes.” Nixon’s grandparents were natives of Scotland, before migrating to South Africa. Today, his brothers and sisters are spread across four continents.

But Nixon’s most important trip may have come in 1994. It was his return to South Africa upon the death of his father, with whom he never fully reconciled after leaving the country. The trip coincided with the country’s first democratic elections.

“While I was dealing with this personal sorrow and the limits of how well I knew my father, there was this international moment of great victory,” he says. “I was searching for a way to pull them both together inside me.”

The result was “Dreambirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food and Fortune.” Published in 2000, the critically lauded book explored the history of ostrich farming in Oudtshoorn, a small town close to Nixon’s hometown of Port Elizabeth. The “feather trade” there boomed briefly before World War I, and quickly busted. But remnants of the industry remained and memories of ostriches were a powerful part of his childhood, he says.

The book is also a memoir that deals with Nixon’s relationship with his family, his own migration to the United States and identity as a South African. That it is centered on ostriches doesn’t seem as odd after Nixon describes the Arab fable detailing the bird’s supposed origins.

When Allah summoned creatures to be named and categorized, the ostrich decided that it was not a bird, since it could not fly, yet also not a beast, since it had two legs rather than four. When Allah noticed the ostrich’s aloofness he decreed: “You have cut yourself off from all your fellow creatures. You have chosen to be different and to be alone. So you shall live as you have chosen.”

Though Nixon still describes himself as a “gregarious recluse,” he says his years of migration are at an end. He and his partner (and fellow UW–Madison English professor) Anne McClintock recently “anchored” here by buying a home not far from campus. After spending years in cosmopolitan cities, he says Madison provides easier access to nature, where he does his best writing.

While taking the fall semester off from teaching, Nixon plans to work on two projects. One is a study of post-colonial literature from across the world, viewed through the prism of environmentalism.

The other project, tentatively titled “An Autobiography of Touch,” stages a personal exploration of masculinity through a series of scenes involving hands and skin.

“A lot has been written about men, and sex and violence,” Nixon says, “much less about men’s experience of the traumatic and restorative power of touch.”

Draine, of the English Department, says Nixon’s colleagues won’t be surprised whatever his next direction.

“We are hardly startled when he publishes a book on ostriches and identity, and we try not to wince when he says his new book will be about “my body,'” she says. “Meanwhile, perusing the Sunday New York Times, we find him in the travel section revealing his adventures in exploring Wisconsin villages and trails. Rob addresses all these topics with sharp insight and elegant style.”