About the Faculty
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Associate Units
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Dr. Tony Simoes da Silva
B.A. (Hons) (ECU), PhD (UWA)
Email: tonys@uow.edu.au
Telephone: 61 (02) 42215898
Location: 19:1103
Senior Lecturer in Transcultural Studies and Associate Dean (Undergraduate Studies)
I joined the University of Wollongong in July 2007. Previously I taught at James Cook University (2005-07), at the University of Exeter, in the UK (2000-05) and on short term contracts at the University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University. I received my PhD in 1997, from the University of Western Australia and a BA Honours (English, First Class; French Major) from Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia.
I am currently Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) and Chair of the Faculty Education Committee. Other governance roles have included Interim Head, School of English Literatures, Philosophy and Languages (January–July 2009); Deputy Head, School of Arts and Social Sciences, James Cook University; and Director, Master of English, University of Exeter (2001-2004).
Research Interests
- Anglophone Postcolonial writing and Postcolonial Theory;
- Literature, place and identity;
- Postcolonial life writing (particular emphasis on African and Caribbean texts);
- Twentieth century literature (Africa, Australian; British; US);
- Diasporic identities; Globalisation;
- Trauma, Politics and literature;
- Refugees, Displacement and Literature;
- Lusophone African writing and culture.
I am happy to discuss proposals for graduate supervision in most of the above areas.
Teaching
Normally likely to be teaching into the following subjects:
- ENGL366 Black Writing (Coordinator, Lecturer and Seminar Leader)
- ENGL945 Contemporary Life Writing (Coordinator and Seminar Leader)
- ENGL946: Text and Context in Contemporary African Writing (Coordinator and Seminar Leader)
- ENGL113 Narrating Contemporary Australia (Coordinator, Lecturer and Tutor)
- ENGL120 Introduction to Literary and Screen Studies (Tutor)
- ENGL121 Text and Gender (Tutor).
Work in Progress
- Narrating a White Africa: Life Writing, History and Identity. Completed monograph on South African life writing.
- Purple Bodies, Battered Nations. Comparative work on selected texts by Zimbabwean and Mozambican women writers.
Publications
Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date
Books
- The Luxury of Nationalist Despair: The Fiction of George Lamming. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2000.
- Interactions: Essays on Literature and Culture in the Asia-Pacific. Associate Editor, with Dennis Haskell and Ron Shapiro. Centre for the Study of Australian Literature, University of Western Australia Press, 2000.
Contributions to Books
- 2010 “The Author is Neither Dead Nor Amused: Reading J.M. Coetzee”, Approaches to Teaching the Works of J.M. Coetzee, Elleke Boehmer, Jane Poyner and Laura Wright, MLA Press. Forthcoming.
- 2010 “Michael Anthony”. In Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Writing, Ed. John Clement Ball, Blackwell. Forthcoming.
- 2010 “The Language of Recognition: Africa and Self in Carolyn Slaughter’s Before the Knife and Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight”. Femmes a Part: The Unsocial Sociability of Women, Ed. Anne Collett and Louise D’Arcens. Forthcoming.
- 2009 “Embodied Genealogies and Gendered Violence in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels.” In Memories of Home: Generations and Genealogy in African Writing, Ed. Yianna Liatsos, Africa World Press. Forthcoming.
- 2008 “Narrating a White Africa: Autobiography, race and history”, Connecting Cultures, ed. Emma Bainbridge. London: Routledge.
- 2008 “Redeeming Self: the Business of Whiteness in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” In Transnational Whiteness Matters, Eds. Maryrose Casey, Aileen Moreton-Robinson & Fiona Nicoll. Lexington Books.
Referred Articles
- 2009 “Literature as Social Barometer in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Reading Contemporary ‘White Writing’”. Social Innovation Network, UOW Online Research. Forthcoming.
- 2009 “Introduction”, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, “Australian Literature in a Global World”.
- 2008 “Paper(less) Selves: Refugee Selfhood in Contemporary Culture”. Kunapipi: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies, XXX (1). 58-78
- 2008 “Narrating Redemption: Life Writing and Whiteness in The New South Africa: Gillian Slovo’s Every Secret Thing”, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 91-107.
- 2007 “‘On your knees, White Man: African (Un)Belongings in Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart”. Partial Answers: A Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, 5.2, 289-307.
- 2005 “Narrating a White Africa: Autobiography, race and history”, Third World Quarterly, 26.3, 471-78.
- 2005 “Myths, Traditions and Mothers of the Nation: Some Thoughts on Efua Sutherland’s Writing”, EnterText, 4.2. 1-17.
- 2004 “‘Playing with words’: politics, poetry and colonialism in José Craveirinha’ work”, Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, 4.2, 2004. 4 – 21.
- 2004 “Rethinking Marginality: Class, Identity and Desire in Contemporary Australian Writing”, Life Writing, 1.1, 2004. 45 – 68.
- 2003 “’Clearing the horizon: science, social sciences and Africa’”: a response”, Mots Pluriels, No. 24, June. http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels/MP2403tss.html
- 2003 “José Craveirinha”, Refereed author entry, Reference Guide to World Literature, Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Detroit: St. James Press, 2003.
- 2003 “Whose Bombay is it, anyway? A reading of Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay”. Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 175. Reprint; first appeared in ARIEL: A Review of International Literature in English, 28.3, July 1997, 63 - 77.
- 2002 “African Childhoods: Identity, Race and Autobiography”, Mots Pluriels, No. 22, August. Special issue on ‘The Child in Africa”. http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels/
- 2002 “Raced Encounters, Sexed Transactions: ‘Luso-tropicalism’ & the Portuguese Colonial Empire”, Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies, 11.1, 27–39.
- 2001 “De/colonizing Tales”, Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 6.1 & 2, 2001. Special issue entitled “Growing Up Elsewhere”. http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/con61.htm
- 2001 “Half-Home: A Reading of Sneja Gunew’s Framing Marginality". In Authority and Influence: Australian literary criticism 1950-2000, Eds Delys Bird, Robert Dixon and Christopher Lee, St Lucia: UQP, 2001, 359-363. First published in 1995 (see below).
Extended Review
- 2009 “We Are One and Many: Remembering Autobiographically”, Article Review, Westerly, Vol. 54, 147-156.
Journal Work
- 2011 “Dissenting Voices”, Life Writing, Guest Editor, with Anne Collett.
- 2009 “Australian Literature in a Global World”, Guest Editor, with Wenche Ommundsen, JASAL (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature), June 2009.
Recent or Forthcoming Conference
- 2010 Paper on Zimbabwean Life Writing, “Life Writing and Intimate Publics” - 7th Biennial International Conference, University of Sussex, June 28-July 1.
- 2010 “Under New Management: Whiteness in Post-Independence Africa”; Never the Twain?: East and West Cultural Self-Images in Auto/Biography, Research School of the Humanities, Australian National University, February 8-12.
- 2009 “Globalised Cartographies”, CAPSTRANS Workshop, “Displacement in the New World Order: Home and Belonging”, University of Wollongong, December 12-13.
- 2009 “Conversations with History in Post-Apartheid South Africa”, Dissenting Voices: Symposium, October 1-2.
- 2009 “Literature as Social Barometer in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Reading Contemporary ‘White Writing’” SInet: Social Innovation Network Conference, September 28-29.
- 2009 “’The Quest for Belonging in Hostile Lands’”: Narrating Trauma in Recent White Zimbabwean Life Writing”, Testimony, Trauma and Social Suffering: New Framings/New Directions, Research School of the Humanities, Australian National University, April 14-16.
- 2008 “Pregnant with History: The Nation in Recent African Fiction”; Flogging a Dead Horse? Are National Literatures Finished?, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, December 10-13.
Referee Work
Oxford University Press; Routledge UK; Hodder and Stoughton, UK; Israel Science Foundation; Partial Answers: A Journal of the History of Literature and Ideas (Israel); Life Writing (Australia); Auto/Biography (UK); Wadabagei: Caribbean Studies and Its Diaspora (US); African Identities (UK); Traffic (Australia); Critical Quarterly (UK).
Academic Consultant
- Dicionário Terminológico de Crítica Literária Pós-Colonial, Coordinated by Dr. Maria Sofia Pimentel Biscaia, of the Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, in collaboration with the University of Roskilde, Norway
- Joint Editor, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature
- Joint Editor, La Questione Meriodionale / Southern Question
- Advisory Board member of Partial Answers: A Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas.
- Advisory Board member of LiNQ (Literature in North Queensland)
- Advisory Board, IcFai University Journal of Commonwealth Literature.
Awards Research
- University of Wollongong Small Grant, $8110.00 (2007)
- James Cook University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Grant, A$4209.00 (2007)
- British Academy Small Grant, UK £4650.00 (January 2005 – January 2006)
- University of Exeter University Research Grant; UK £10,000.00 (2004)
- British Academy Small Grant UK £2580.00 (July 2002 – May 2003)
Teaching
- Nomination, OCTAL (Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning), 2008.
- Certificate of Appreciation by James Cook University” for “Contribution during 2006 to the JCU Community of Teaching Scholarship
- “Inclusive Practice Award” in recognition of exceptional support for students with disabilities (Nominated by Students”), James Cook
- James Cook University, Teaching and Learning Grant, “Learning to Stay at University”, A$1500.00 (transition challenges for 1st year Indigenous Australian students, 2007).University, 2006.
Current Research Students
- James Dahlstrom (MA Research, Co-supervisor)
- Ingeborg van Teeseling (PhD, Co-supervisor)
- Dan Huang (Rachel) (PhD, Co-supervisor)
Languages
- Portuguese—Native fluency
- French — fluent
- Italian / Spanish —Reading / Speaking / Comprehension
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