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.