United States
In 1965, Coetzee went to the University of Texas at Austin[b] in the United States and enrolled in bibliography and Old English courses. While there, he taught students at the university, and also wrote a paper on the morphology of the Nama, Malay, and Dutch languages for linguist Archibald A. Hill,[16] who taught at the university.[17][18] His PhD dissertation was a computer-aided stylistic analysis of Samuel Beckett's English prose.[4] After leaving Texas in 1968, he was awarded his doctorate in 1969.[19]
In 1968, Coetzee began teaching English literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he stayed until 1971. At Buffalo, he began his first novel, Dusklands.[4]
From as early as 1968, Coetzee sought permanent residence in the U.S., a process that was finally unsuccessful, in part due to his involvement in protests against the war in Vietnam. In March 1970, he was one of 45 faculty members who occupied the university's Hayes Hall and were arrested for criminal trespass.[20] The charges against them were dropped in 1971.[4]
University of Cape Town
In 1972, Coetzee returned to South Africa and was appointed lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Cape Town. He was promoted to senior lecturer and associate professor before becoming Professor of General Literature in 1984. In 1994 Coetzee became Arderne Professor in English, and in 1999 he was appointed Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Humanities. Upon retirement in 2002, he was awarded emeritus status.[21][22]
He served on the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago until 2003.[23]
Adelaide
After relocating to Adelaide, Australia,[8] Coetzee was made an honorary research fellow at the English Department of the University of Adelaide,[24] where his partner, Dorothy Driver,[12] is a fellow academic.[25] As of November 2023, Coetzee is listed as University Professorial Research Fellow within the School of Humanities[26]
