introduction
My name is David Lucking and
since 2001 I have been Full Professor of English at
the University of Salento, where my recent teaching responsibilities
have included courses in Shakespeare,
English Literature, Canadian Literature in English, and English Language.
My educational trajectory began with schooling in London, Montreal and Toronto, and included a two-year stint at Robert College in Istanbul during which I majored in Comparative Literature. I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Leeds, gaining a first class combined honours degree in English and Philosophy and winning the university's Crabtree Prize for outstanding academic achievement. Funded by a university studentship awarded on the basis of academic merit, I subsequently earned my PhD at the same institution, writing my doctoral dissertation on religious elements in the fiction of Joseph Conrad.
Although my research interests are fairly diversified, a theme that crops up with some regularity in my work is that of language in its relation to identity, an issue I have explored from various points of view and in the contexts of both English and Canadian literature. Among the authors who have particularly attracted my attention are Shakespeare, Conrad and Margaret Laurence, but I have delved into the work of numerous other writers as well, publishing some ten books and over seventy articles in the fields of English, Canadian and American literature. A substantial number of my papers on Shakespeare have been reprinted in various venues.
I am currently vice-chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Salento, a member of the administrative and editorial boards of the journal Lingue e Linguaggi, and a member of the doctoral school "Linguistic, Historical-Literary and Intercultural Studies" of the University of Salento.