Editing Raymond Williams (section)

=== Academic career ===
[[Image:Raymond Williams in 1972.jpg|left|200 px|thumb|Raymond Williams in 1972]]
On the strength of his books, Williams was invited to return to Cambridge in 1961, where he was elected a fellow of [[Jesus College, Cambridge]].<ref name="WWW"/> He eventually achieved an appointment in the [[Faculty of English, University of Cambridge]], first as Reader in Drama (1967–1974), and then as the university's first Professor of Drama (1974–1983).<ref name="ODNB"/><ref>J. P. Ward, ''Raymond Williams'', pg. 8.</ref> He was a visiting professor of political science at [[Stanford University]] in 1973, an experience he used to effect in his still useful book ''Television: Technology and Cultural Form'' (1974).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Raymond |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134379378 |title=Television: Technology and Cultural Form |date=2003-10-20 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-203-42664-7 |editor-last=Williams |editor-first=Raymond |edition=3rd |location=London |language=en |doi=10.4324/9780203426647}}</ref>

A committed socialist, he was interested in the relations between [[language]], literature and society, and published many books, essays and articles on these and other issues. Among the main ones is ''[[The Country and the City]]'' (1973), where chapters on literature alternate with chapters on social history. His tightly written ''Marxism and Literature'' (1977) is mainly for specialists, but also sets out his approach to [[cultural studies]], which he called cultural materialism. The book was in part a response to [[structuralism]] in literary studies and pressure on Williams to make a more theoretical statement of his position, against criticisms that it was a humanist Marxism, based on unexamined assumptions about lived experience. He makes much use of the ideas of [[Antonio Gramsci]], though the book is uniquely Williams's and written in his characteristic voice. For a more accessible version, see ''Culture'' (1981-1982), which develops an argument about cultural sociology, which he hoped would become "a new major discipline".{{sfn|Williams|1981|p=233}} Introducing the US edition, Bruce Robbins identifies it as "implicit self-critique" of Williams's earlier ideas, and a basis on which "to conceive the oppositionality of the critic in a permanently fragmented society".<ref>{{cite book|first=Bruce |last=Robbins |chapter=Foreword |title=The Sociology of Culture |location=Chicago |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |date=1995 |pages=xi}}</ref>