Mr David Potter
My research explores the intersections of literature, mysticism, and metaphysical thought. I’m interested in twentieth-century works that are in dialogue with the spectral and multidimensional iconography of the past. Literary texts encode traces of their authors’ interests, and for most of the writers, film-makers, artists, and thinkers that occupy most of my time most days, those interests inevitably seem to always include mysticism, esotericism, quantum theory, and neurological models of perception. Writers like Schulz and Nabokov weave beguiling otherworld-fiction out of whatever they happened to be reading at the time, and if what they were reading was weird as hell, what we end up with are texts like Ada (1969) and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Clepsydra (1937), which shape new ways of thinking about fictional spacetime. Obsessively researching Nabokov’s life and context (1899-1977) over the last decade has turned me into a full-blown specialist of twentieth-century film and literature. My interests and proficiencies in twentieth-century culture are far-reaching, so the potential for interdisciplinary exchanges, and for cross-listing any units of study I teach within the university, is vast (especially International and Comparative Literature Studies, English, Film Studies, Jewish Studies, and/or American Studies).
General topics:
Modernist and postmodernist literature – Fiction and the philosophy of time – Literature and the metaphysical – Esoteric and metaphysical traditions in literary history – American and European literature, film, and culture of the mid-to-late twentieth century – Intersections of theology and literary theory – Quantum theory in literature – Neuropsychology in literature – Cult film and television of the mid-to-late twentieth century – Alternative British humour of the mid-to-late twentieth century – Eastern-European literature (esp. Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Ashkenazi).
Specific writers:
Vladimir Nabokov – Bruno Schulz – J. W. Dunne – John Barth – Andrei Bely – Alexander Blok – Donald Barthelme – Jorge Luis Borges – Nikolai Gogol – Henry James – Franz Kafka – Frederic W. H. Myers – Gustav Meyrink – Spike Milligan – Flann O’Brien – Pavel Florensky – P. D. Ouspensky – Marcel Proust – Rudolf Steiner – H. G. Wells.
Film-makers:
Dan Curtis – Wojciech Has – Alejandro Jodorowsky – Stanley Kubrick – David Lynch – Andrei Tarkovsky – Robert Altman – Russian and Eastern Bloc cinema
EUST2005: Institutions of the European Union
Past:
ENGL1002: Narratives of Romance and Adventure (2018-2019)
PhD / Thesis— ‘Mystical Time and Other Worlds in Late Nabokov’
My PhD thesis explores how Nabokov engages with metaphysical structures, esotericism, and mystical frameworks in his later work, with especial attention paid to Pale Fire (1962) and Ada (1969). It draws on the vast amount of archival work I’ve been doing in the United States, examining the Vladimir Nabokov papers held in the Library of Congress, Harvard Library, and the New York Public Library.
Side-projects
Bruno Schulz—I’m working towards a book of translations of a series of book reviews Bruno Schulz wrote for Polish literary journals in the 1930s which haven’t made it into English yet. Schulz was a Holocaust victim, and almost all of his papers were lost in the war. My intention is to use these pieces to weave a better picture of Schulz’s background reading for writing his fiction, and also recuperate the guy as a serious literary scholar for an English-language readership. Work is ongoing.
Dark Shadows—Dan Curtis’s 1,255-episode televisual opus Dark Shadows (1966-1971) forms the basis for a series of memoiristic fictocritical essays I’m writing about childhood memory and imagination. I’m following Tony Trigilio’s lead, here, whose multi-volume poetic opus The Complete Dark Shadows (Of My Childhood) (BlazeVOX, 2014-present) might as well share its title with my dreams. In this I am also inspired by Jeremy Stewart, Roland Barthes, Gaston Bachelard, Paul Mann, and Andrew Field. It’s all very strange and weird and fun.
- International Vladimir Nabokov Society (2018-present)
- French Nabokov Society (2023-present)
2024
James Kentley Memorial Funds Scholarship, University of Sydney
Research Grant for Archival Research, International Vladimir Nabokov Society
Conference Travel Support Grant, International Vladimir Nabokov Society
2023
Postgraduate Research Support Scheme (PRSS), University of Sydney
Conference Travel Support Grant, French Nabokov Society
2022
Doctoral Research Travel Grant, University of Sydney
Winter School Scholarship, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
2021-present
Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship, University of Sydney
Thesis work
Thesis title: Time and Other Worlds in Late Nabokov
Supervisors: Peter Morgan, Vrasidas Karalis
Conference Presentations
2024
- ‘Provoking Nabokovian Time with Bruno Schulz’. Presented at Vladimir Nabokov, or Education Without Borders conference, Cornell University, USA, October.
- [Recording: https://youtu.be/uE7a9gHv3B0.]
2023
- ‘Contaminated Greens: Heretical Vegetarianism in Pale Fire’ (co-presentation with Louise Carey-White). Presented at Nabokov and Nature conference, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, July.
2022
- ‘Navigating the Distant Northern Waters of Pale Fire from Another Hemisphere’. Presented (via Zoom) for the Nabokov Readings conference, Pushkin House, Russia, July.
- [Recording - https://www.youtube.com/live/gUkdz9MgzlM?si=bt_-cN0HMNgFJVLi&t=81].
- ‘Paramnesia and the L-disaster in Nabokov’s Ada’. Presented at Hidden Nabokov conference, Wellesley College, USA, June.
2017
- ‘The Shadow-Worlds of Nabokov's Poshlost'’. Presented at Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association (ANZASA) conference, Australian Catholic University, June.
- ‘The Unexpected Relevance of Nabokov’s Poshlost’ for Contemporary America’. Presented at NewMac Conference, Macquarie University, Sydney, July.
- ‘Pekka Tammi – The Forgotten Master of Nabokov’s Style’. Presented at The Idea of Prose Style, University of Sydney/University of New South Wales, December.
- ‘Vladimir Nabokov, His Father, and The Bolshevik Revolution’. Presented at Reform, Revolution and Crisis in European History, Culture and Political Thought, University of Sydney, December.
2015
- ‘The Not-So-Faint Paramnesic Tang of Nabokov’s Ada’. Presented at the Nabokov Readings conference, Nabokov Museum, St Petersburg, Russia, July.