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Associate Professor Tony Simoes da Silva

B.A. (Hons) (ECU), PhD (UWA)

Email: tonys@uow.edu.au
Telephone: 61 (02) 4221 5898
Location: 19:2054

Associate Professor in Transcultural Studies; Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and FEC Chair; Interim Convenor of the Master of International Studies

I joined the University of Wollongong in July 2007. Previously I taught at James Cook University, Australia (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 (1998-2000). 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.

Currently I am Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and Chair of the Faculty Education Committee, a member of UOW Senate, of the Senate Standing Committee and of the UOW Education Committee. Other governance roles have included Interim Head, School of English Literatures, Philosophy and Languages (UOW, January–July 2009); Deputy Head, School of Arts and Social Sciences, James Cook University (January-May 2007); and Director, Master of English, University of Exeter (2001-2004). I co-edit the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature and La Questione Meridionale/The Southern Question.

Research interests

Anglophone Postcolonial writing and Postcolonial Theory;
Postcolonial life writing (particular emphasis on African and Caribbean texts);
Twentieth century literature (Africa, Australian; British; US);
Diasporic identities; Globalisation;
Trauma, Politics and literature;
Displacement and literature, especially refugees and writing;
Lusophone African writing and culture.

I am happy to discuss proposals for postgraduate supervision in most of the above areas.

Teaching

AUTUMN 2012: ENGL366 Black Writing from Africa, the US and the Caribbean (Coordinator, Lecturer and Seminar Leader);
SPRING 2012: ENGL229 The Romantics (Coordinator, Lecturer and Seminar Leader)
Occasional lectures in ENGL120, ENGL131, HIST107, INTS100.
Honours and Special Topic supervisions.

Publications

Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date

Books

2000 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.

Work in progress

2012 Emerging Critical Perspectives on M.G. Vassanji. Ed. with Justus Makokha, Rodopi.
2012 Critical Approaches to M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets, Ed. with Justus Makokha.
Narrating a White Africa: Life Writing, History and Identity; monograph on South African life writing.

Journal issues

2011 Editor, with Anne Collett. “Dissenting Lives”, Life Writing, Vol. 8.3.
2011 Editor, with Frances Devlin-Glass, Annual issue of JASAL 11 (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature).
2011 Editor, with Gaetano Rando, Lidia Bilbatua and Henri JeanJean La Questione Meridionale (The Southern Question), Vol. 1.2.
2010 Editor, with Gaetano Rando, Lidia Bilbatua and Henri JeanJean La Questione Meridionale (The Southern Question), Vol. 1.1.158pp.
2010 Editor, with Frances Devlin-Glass. Annual issue of JASAL, 10 (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature).
2009 Editor, with Wenche Ommundsen, “Australian Literature in a Global World”, JASAL (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature).

Contributions to books

2012 “Under New Management: Whiteness in Post-Independence Africa”. Locating Life Stories: Beyond East-West Binaries in (Auto)Biographical Studies, ed. Craig Howes and Maureen Perkins, Hawaii University Press. 83-94

2012 “Globalised Cartographies of Being: Literature, Refugees and the Australian Nation”. In Liberalism and Displacement: Comparative Research from the Asia Pacific, Ed. Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, Ashgate. Forthcoming

2012 “War, Civil Conflict and Displacement in Contemporary African Writing”, in Justus Makokha & Joseph Acquah, 2012. Forthcoming

2012 “In Between Memory and History: The In-Btween World of Vikram Lall”, in Emerging Perspectives on MG Vassanji, Justus Makokha & Tony Simoes da Silva, Rodopi. Forthcoming

2012 “Introduction”, in Critical Approaches to M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets, Eds. Justus Makokha & Tony Simoes da Silva. Forthcoming

2012 “Introduction”, in Emerging Perspectives on MG Vassanji, Eds. Justus Makokha & Tony Simoes da Silva, Rodopi. Forthcoming

2011 “Michael Anthony”. In Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction, Ed. Brian W. Shaffer et al, Wiley-Blackwell.

2010 “Literature as Social Barometer in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Reading Contemporary ‘White Writing’”. In Heather Yeatman, Ed., The SInet 2010 eBook, Sinet University of Wollongong. 83-93

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”. The Unsocial Sociability of Women, Ed. Anne Collett and Louise D’Arcens.London: Palgrave, 204-220.

2008 “Narrating a White Africa: Autobiography, Race and History”, Connecting Cultures, ed. Emma Bainbridge. London: Routledge, 85-92

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, 3-17.

Referred articles

2011 “The Chief Taxidermist has left the Museum”. Wasafiri, 68.3, 63-68

2011 “Longing, Belonging and Self-Making in Zimbabwean Life Writing: Peter Godwin’s When a Crocodile Eats the Sun”, LiNQ, Volume 38.

2011 “Dissenting Voices”, with Anne Collett; Life Writing, 8.4, 351-359

2009 “We Are One and Many: Remembering Autobiographically”, Westerly, Vol. 54, 147-156

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, 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, 63 - 77.

2002 “African Childhoods: Identity, Race and Autobiography”, Mots Pluriels, No. 22, August. Special issue on ‘The Child in Africa”.

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”.

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, in Meridian: The La Trobe University English Review, 14.1. 75-82.

Extended reviews

2011 'New Literatures: Africa (Eastern and Southern Africa)', The Year's Work in English Studies

2010 'New Literatures: Africa (Eastern and Southern Africa)', The Year's Work in English Studies. 965-999.

Other

2009 “Introduction”, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, “Australian Literature in a Global World”.

Recent or forthcoming conference

2010 “Bones and bodies: Narrating Personal and National Trauma in White 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.

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
Advisory Board, Partial Answers: A Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas.
Advisory Board, LiNQ (Literature in North Queensland)
Advisory Board, IcFai University Journal of Commonwealth Literature.
BA Advisor (English Studies), Avondale College (2009-)

Awards

Research

University of Wollongong Small Grant, $9000.00, with Debra Dudek (2010)
University of Wollongong Small Grant, $8110.00 (2008)
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), 2010.

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).