Niko Shefer - Teaching the Important Works of English Literature

Niko Shefer is an English Literature professor working at the University in South Africa. Niko Shefer is from South Africa, but he studied English Literature at New York University, where he earned his Master’s degree in the subject and at the University of Paris, where he earned his Doctorate in the subject. He is now a prolific writer and critic of English works of fiction and poetry.

He has long been immersed in the most important works of English Literature and teaches his students how to discern for themselves which works are more important than others and how to write about them and analyze them for future readers.

Niko Shefer considers William Shakespeare the most important of all English writers through the centuries. This isn’t a revolutionary position among his colleagues by any stretch of the imagination, but his passion for the Bard laces all of his teachings in his English Literature department and courses at the University in South Africa.

He has developed the skills to unpack meaning from his favorite English poets, from Keats to Eliot over his long career reading and writing about the English canon. Shefer today expounds to his students the importance of discovering their own favorite authors they feel passionate about because the more passionate they feel about a particular author or poet, the better their theses become.

Niko Shefer teaches his students more than the basics of classic English Literature. Where the authors came from, what social and cultural problems they were writing about are essential to the understanding of all literature. Shefer has become a leading critic of modern English literature as well over his long career and is always reading and finding new voices that can make a difference for readers for generations to come. Shefer lets his own work bleed into his teachings as he works with his students to help them understand the voices of the past and how they affect the world we all live in today.

Shefer has helped his students understand what the authors he studies were saying about their society and culture when they were alive. Authors like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen were recorders of their time and place in the world. Shefer and professors of English Literature like him seek to find universal truths that still affect everyone living around the world today. 

He believes that the great English writers of the past have something to say all of us across the centuries. He can’t take the risk that their messages get lost, because we can all learn things from them today still. Niko Shefer has created opportunities for his students to get lost in the great works of English authors over the years the way he has.