Edwin Thumboo - Education and Career

Education and Career

Thumboo majored in English literature and history at the University of Malaya. As a freshman, he was a member of the editorial board of Fajar (Dawn in Malay), a radical leftist journal published by the University Socialist Club. The seventh issue of Fajar which appeared in May 1954 contained an editorial entitled "Aggression in Asia" which advocated independence from the United Kingdom. Three days later, Chinese middle school students clashed with the police. As a result, after two weeks Thumboo was arrested by the British colonial government together with seven other students and put on trial for sedition. Minister Mentor and former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who was the Club's legal adviser and a Fajar subscriber, arranged for British Queen's Counsel D. N. Pritt to act in their defence, with Lee himself as junior counsel. The students were acquitted of the charge by District Judge F. A. Chua.

Thumboo graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with honours (B.A. (Hons.)) in English in 1956. Hoping to teach and pursue a further degree, he applied for a position at the university but was rejected as few locals held academic posts at that time. He therefore entered the civil service, working for the Income Tax Department (1957–1961), Central Provident Fund Board (1961–1965), and the Singapore Telephone Board (1965–1966) where he was an assistant secretary. In 1966, the year following Singapore's independence, he joined the University of Singapore as an assistant lecturer. Conducting doctoral research into African poetry in English, he received his Ph.D. from the university in 1970. He became a full professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, heading the department between 1977 and 1993. The University of Singapore and Nanyang University merged in 1980 to form the National University of Singapore (NUS), and he was the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences from 1980 to 1991, NUS's longest-serving dean.

As an academic, he taught Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, the Romantic poets, Malaysian and Singaporean literatures, and creative writing, among other subjects. His research interests included the modern novel (E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad) and the novels of Empire (such as Rudyard Kipling), Commonwealth literature (including Botswana writer Bessie Head), and William Shakespeare's Roman plays. When he headed the English Department, it introduced the study of Commonwealth/New Literatures in English, and of English language as a major so that graduates would be better equipped to teach English in schools and junior colleges. Thumboo was appointed a Professorial Fellow by NUS in 1995 and continues to be associated with the university as an emeritus professor, a position he has held since he retired from full-time teaching in September 1997. He served as the first Chairman and Director of the university's Centre for the Arts from 1993 to 2005.

Thumboo also held visiting professorships and fellowships at universities in Australia, the UK and the US. He was Fulbright-Hayes Visiting Professor at Pennsylvania State University (1979–1980); Chairman of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, VII Triennium (1983–1986); Writer-in-Residence at the Institute of Culture and Communication, Hawaii (1985); Ida Beam Professor at the University of Iowa in 1986; a member of the International Advisory Panel at the East-West Centre, Hawaii (1987); Honorary Research Fellow at University College, University of London (1987); a member of the Committee of Jurors for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in Oklahoma, USA (1988); CAS–Miller Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1998), Visiting Professor and Writer-in-Residence at University of Wollongong in New South Wales (1989); and Visiting Fellow at the Department of English, Australian Defence Force Academy (1993). In 1991, Thumboo worked with the Ministry of Education to help establish the Creative Arts Programme for secondary school and junior college students in Singapore. He continues to mentor young poets under the programme.