Peter Swirski

Peter Swirski is a Canadian literary and cultural critic featured in Canadian Who’s Who. Currently Senior Research Associate at the Wirth Institute at the University of Alberta, Canada, and Honorary Professor of American Literature and Culture at Jinan University, China, he was formerly Distinguished Professor of American Studies and American Literature at SYSU in China, and Professor and Research Director at Europe’s elite Helsinki Institute for Advanced Studies in Finland. He has published extensively on contemporary American literature and culture, including popular fiction and popular culture, winning critical awards and attracting praise ranging from the Financial Times to the TLS. Among his nineteen books, the groundbreaking From Lowbrow to Nobrowis a staple of popular culture studies, joined more recently by American Crime Fiction: A Cultural History of Genre Literature as Art and When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow: Popular Culture and the Rise of Nobrow. He has given keynotes and lectures on all continents of the world save Africa, in 2012 delivering a plenary at UNE's Institute for Global Humanities alongside Noam Chomsky. He has also made multiple television appearances in Europe, Russia, the United States, and Hong Kong, as well as on the BBC World Service with audiences of 200 million worldwide.