Meg Samuelson

Associate Professor Meg Samuelson

Associate Professor

School of Humanities

Faculty of Arts

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD - email supervisor to discuss availability.

I joined the Department of English, Creative Writing, and Film in 2017, after holding positions at the University of Cape Town (2013-2017) and Stellenbosch University (2005-2012) in South Africa.

My research and teaching is predominantly in literary and cultural studies, and I work primarily on literary texts, though I also focus on photography, film and other cultural forms and am deeply engaged in interdisciplinary conversations. I have produced 100+ publications and delivered 100+ presentations (including 50+ keynote or invited and funded addresses) in: African and South African studies; Africa-Asia and Indian Ocean studies; Australian literatures; Anthropocene studies and the environmental humanities; critical theory and literary debates; the oceanic humanities, coastal studies and the 'oceanic south'; postcolonial, decolonial, global south, southern hemisphere and world literatures; water in various forms and figurations; and, women's writing and theories of gender.

Alongside Mandy Treagus, I am CI on the ARC SRI 'Between Indian and Pacific Oceans: Reframing Australian Literatures' (2021-2024) and I lead the research themes 'Stories from the South' in the School of the Humanities and 'South/South' in the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide.

I have supervised 28 Higher Degree Researchers to successful completion (14 Master's and 14 PhD), along with 4 postdoctoral and 3 ECR fellows. My current cohort includes 8 PhDs in English and Creative Writing, and I welcome enquiries from prospective HDR candidates interested in engaging with research areas in which I am active.

My current administrative roles include serving as Postgraduate Coordinator in the Department of English, Creative Writing and Film and as Chair of the School of Humanities Research Committee. I am also a member of the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, and serve on the JMCCCP''s Management Committee, as well as a member of the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender at the University of Adelaide.

I hold an honorary appointment as Associate Professor Extraordinaire in English at Stellenbosch University, South Africa (2018-2023). Other current external affiliations include invited associate membership of the Observatory for the Societies of the Indian Ocean (University of Reunion, France) and of Oceanic Humanities for the Global South (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa).

I serve also on the editorial/advisory boards of a number of international academic journals, such as Ariel: A Review of International English Literature (U Calgary and Johns Hopkins UP), as well as of the book series 'African Articulations' (Boydell & Brewer/James Currey) and 'Literatures as World Literature' (Bloomsbury). I peer review for another 50+ academic journals and publishers, and I co-edit the recently launched Palgrave Macmillan series on Maritime Literature and Culture (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15773).

BOOK PROJECTS IN PROGRESS

  • 'The Sea and Shore in South African Literatures: Tidelines'. Work in progress. Contracted with Palgrave Macmillan. 
  • 'Amphibian Aesthetics: Writing from the African Indian Ocean Littoral'. Work in progress.
  • 'Photographic Culture in Zanzibar, 1868-2018'. Work in progress with Pamila Gupta.
  • 'Southern Waters'. Work in progress with Theodora Galanis, Matthew Hooton, Nick Jose, Madeleine Seys, Maggie Tonkin & Mandy Treagus.

CURRENT & FORTHCOMING ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS

  • ‘The Blue Anthropocene and the Oceanic South: Reading Containerization and Inundation Diffractively’. Forthcoming in: Water Lore: Places, Poetics and Practices. Ed. Claudia Egerer and Camille Roulière. London: Routledge. 
  • 'Fire/Bushfire'. Forthcoming in: Energized: Keywords for a New Politics of Energy and Environment, ed. Imre Szeman and Jennifer Wenzel. West Virginia University Press (Energy and Society Series). 
  • 'Anomalous, containerized and inundating waters: thinking from the Cape and through blue focalization with K. Sello Duiker's Thirteen Cents'. Forthcoming in: Interventions: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies on 'Reading for Water in Southern African Literature', ed. Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery and Sarah Nuttall. 
  • [TBC: tidal forms in the oceanic south]. Under preparation for: Routledge Companion to Postcolonial and Decolonial Literatures, ed. Praseeda Gopinath and Laura Bewick. 

See PUBLICATIONS for published and in-press outputs 

RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS, SELECTED & RECENT

Conference keynote addresses, selected

  • 'Reparative Aesthetics: Enduring Violence and the Practice of Care'. Dissensus in the Postcolonial Anglophone World: History, Politics and Aesthetics. Université de Lille, France. 31 Jan-1 Feb 2019.
  • ‘Coastal Thought: Keywords from 40 Cs’. Indian Ocean: Ecotones, Contact Zones, and Third Spaces. Ecotones 3. Observatory for Indian Ocean Societies, University of Reunion; EMMA (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3) & MIGRINTER (CNRS-Université de Poitiers), Saint-Denis, Reunion, France, 14-16 June 2018.
  • ‘From Manichean to Amphibian Aesthetics: Narrating and Framing the Eastern African Indian Ocean Littoral’. Textualities of Space: Connections, Intricacies, and Intimacies. 2nd Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies Conference. Makerere University and Stellenbosch University, Kampala, Uganda, 20-22 August 2015.
  • ‘The Blue Metropolis: Writing on Water in Contemporary South African Cities’. Cities in Flux: Metropolitan Spaces in South African Literary and Visual Texts. University of Basel, Switzerland, 9-10 June 2015.
  • ‘From Indian Ocean Pasts to African-Asian Presents: Before the Cape, From the Cape, @ the Cape’. Re-Thinking African-Asian Relationships: Changing Realities—New Concepts. AFRASO, Goethe University, Frankfurt, and Confucius Centre, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa, 25-27 March 2015.

Other presentations, selected & recent (since 2017)

  • 'Theory from the Shores of the Oceanic South?' Situations of Theory. Conference. Flinders University and the University of Adelaide, 29-30 October 2021. Invited. Forthcoming.
  • 'Thinking the World from Africa: A Conversation with Achille Mbembe'. Situations of Theory. Conference. Flinders University and the University of Adelaide, 29-30 October 2021. Forthcoming.
  • 'Towards an Indian Ocean Australian Literature; or, a speculative proposal for a cultural cartography of the Indian Ocean Dipole'. Presentation in Panel: 'Between Indian & Pacific Oceans: Reframing Australian Literature'. Australian Seascapes: the 17th Biannual Conference of the Association for Australian Studies. Virtual Conference. Trier University, Germany, 30 Sept-2 Oct 2021.
  • 'Containerized and inundating oceans: thinking from the Cape and through blue focalisation'. Oceanic Imaginations: Fluid Histories and Mobile Cultures. Virtual Workshop, Columbia University, New York, 6-8 May 2021. Invited and funded.
  •  ‘Fetch, harbor and turbulence: the haunts of the oceanic south’. Returning to the Gothic Ocean: Maritime, Marine and Aquatic Uncanny in Southern Waters. Virtual Symposium, James Cooke University and University of Melbourne, 12 February 2021. Invited.
  • 'Waterways of Knowing: Thinking from the South and at the Ends of the World'. Post-Imperial Oceanics. Online Conference, University of California at Berkeley, 4-5 November 2020. Invited and funded.
  • 'Thinking with pandemics, pangolins and poets'. The ZOO/m Salon: The Situation We Find Ourselves In. Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Adelaide, 19 June 2020. Invited.
  • 'Moving frames and circulating subjects: photographic reflections on Indian Ocean Africa'. Indian Ocean: Circulations and Representations. Conference. NILUS Project and University of Lisbon, Lisbon, 5-6 December 2019. Invited and funded.
  • ‘Reading for Water in Thirteen Cents’. Reading for Water, Online Workshop, ‘Oceanic Humanities for the Global South’, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2 October 2020. Invited.
  • 'Freddie's first photographer...'. Cloth and Paper: Queer Materialities. History Trust and Migration Museum, Adelaide, 16 May 2019. Invited.
  • ‘Writing Southern Worlds: The Case of J.M. Coetzee’. World Literature: Postcolonial Perspectives. University Delhi, University of Potsdam & Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural Sociology at La Trobe University, Delhi, India, 15-17 March 2018. Invited and funded.
  • ‘Toward the Blue Southern Hemisphere’, Further South. Roundtable. ‘Other Worlds’ ARC Discovery Project & Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Adelaide, Australia, 15 February 2018. Invited.
  • ‘Writing sexual and “slow” violence in dehumanizing and more-than-human times: Lauretta Ngcobo’s And they didn’t die and Karen Jayes’s For the Mercy of Water’. Representations of Gendered Violence in Cultural Texts of the Global South. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 5-6 December 2017. Invited and funded.
  • ‘Indian Ocean/Southern Ocean: Thinking across the South’. Conference of the Observatory of Indian Ocean Societies, University of Reunion, Saint-Denis, Reunion, 23-24 November 2017. Invited and funded.
  • ‘Thinking from the Cape to the Southern Ocean’. From Ponte to Perth. Another Antipodes Gallery & Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural Sociology at La Trobe University, Freemantle, Australia, 30 June 2017. Invited and funded.
  • ‘On the (South African) beach: shifting frames’. Writing Place, Pushing Genre: Adventures across South African and Australia. Curtin University & Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural Sociology at La Trobe University, Perth, Australia, 29 June 2017. Invited and funded.
    Expand

  • Appointments
    Date Position Institution name
    2019 Associate Professor The University of Adelaide
    2018 Associate Professor Extraordinary Stellenbosch University
    2017 - 2018 Lecturer The University of Adelaide
    2013 - 2017 Associate Professor University of Cape Town
    2009 - 2012 Associate Professor Stellenbosch University
    2007 - 2008 Senior Lecturer Stellenbosch University
    2005 - 2006 Lecturer Stellenbosch University
    2002 - 2003 Visiting Scholar University of California at Berkeley

  • Awards and Achievements
    Date Type Title Institution Name Country Amount
    2017 Achievement Internationally Acclaimed Researcher (B2) Rating National Research Foundation of South Africa South Africa ZAR160,000
    2017 Research Award Women's Research Excellence Award The University of Adelaide Australia $5000
    2015 Award Merit Award (Research and Teaching) University of Cape Town South Africa ZAR66,000
    2014 Research Award Young Researcher Award College of Fellows, University of Cape Town South Africa ZAR30,000
    2007 Research Award Rector's Award for Research Excellence Stellenbosch University South Africa —
    2000 Scholarship AW Mellon Fellowship University of Cape Town South Africa —

  • Education
    Date Institution name Country Title
    2005 University of Cape Town South Africa PhD
    1999 University of Leeds United Kingdom MA (Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures)
    1997 University of Cape Town South Africa BA (Hons)
    Expand

  • Journals
    Year Citation
    2021 Samuelson, M. (2021). An 'international author, but in a different sense': J.M. Coetzee and 'Literatures of the South'. Thesis Eleven, 162(1), 137-154.
    DOI Scopus1
    2020 Samuelson, M. (2020). Thinking the Anthropocene South. Contemporary Literature, 61(4).
    2019 Samuelson, M., & Lavery, C. (2019). The Oceanic South. English Language Notes, 57(1), 37-50.
    DOI Scopus6 WoS5
    2018 Samuelson, M. (2018). Thinking with sharks: racial terror, species extinction and other Anthropocene fault lines. Australian Humanities Review, (63), 31-47.
    2018 Samuelson, M. (2018). “You’ll never forget what your camera remembers”: image-things and changing times in Capital Art Studio, Zanzibar’. Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural Studies, 32(1), 75-91.
    DOI
    2017 Samuelson, M. (2017). African textualities: travelling forms and subjects–an introduction. Social Dynamics, 43(1), 1-7.
    DOI
    2017 Samuelson, M. (2017). Searching for stoke in Indian Ocean surf zones: surfaris, offshoring and the shore-break. Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 13(3), 311-325.
    DOI
    2017 Samuelson, M., & Boehmer, E. (2017). ‘Writing Migrant Lives in the South: A Conversation’. Sydney Review of Books.
    2017 Samuelson, M. (2017). Coastal form: amphibian positions, wider worlds, and planetary horizons on the African Indian Ocean littoral. Comparative Literature, 69(1), 16-24.
    DOI Scopus8 WoS6
    2016 Samuelson, M. (2016). Literature in the world: a view from Cape Town. PMLA, 131(5), 1544-1547.
    DOI
    2016 Samuelson, M. (2016). Reading nostalgia and beyond: the hermeneutics of suspicion and race; and, learning to read, again, with Zoë Wicomb. English in Africa, 43(3), 117-139.
    DOI
    2016 Samuelson, M. (2016). Producing a world of remains in Indian Ocean Africa: discrepant time, melancholy affect and the subject of transport in Capital Art Studio, Stone Town, Zanzibar. African Studies, 75(2), 233-256.
    DOI Scopus2 WoS2
    2016 Samuelson, M. (2016). Rendering the Cape-as-port: Sea-Mountain, Cape of Storms/Good Hope, Adamastor and local-world literary formations. Journal of Southern African Studies, 42(3), 523-537.
    DOI Scopus7 WoS6
    2015 Samuelson, M. (2015). Richard Rive: a partial biography. SOCIAL DYNAMICS-A JOURNAL OF AFRICAN STUDIES, 41(1), 204-207.
    DOI
    2014 Samuelson, M. (2014). Re-telling freedom in Otelo Burning: the beach, surf noir, and Bildung at the Lamontville pool. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 26(3), 307-323.
    DOI Scopus1 WoS1
    2014 Samuelson, M. (2014). Yvette Christiansë's Oceanic Genealogies and the Colonial Archive: Castaways and Generations from Eastern Africa to the South Atlantic. Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, 1(1-2), 27-38.
    DOI
    2014 Samuelson, M. (2014). (Un)lawful subjects of company. Interventions, 16(6), 795-817.
    DOI Scopus5 WoS3
    2014 Samuelson, M., & Thompson, G. (2014). Interview with Sara Blecher and Sihle Xaba: The making and meanings of Otelo Burning. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 26(3), 352-361.
    DOI
    2014 Samuelson, M., & Thompson, G. (2014). Introduction. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 26(3), 303-306.
    DOI
    2013 Samuelson, M. (2013). Sea-changes, dark tides and littoral states: oceans and coastlines in post-apartheid South African narratives. Alternation, (6), 9-28.
    2013 Samuelson, M. (2013). Narrative cartographies, ‘beautiful things’ and littoral states in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea. English Studies in Africa, 56(1), 78-90.
    DOI Scopus7 WoS4
    2012 Samuelson, M. (2012). Crossing the Indian Ocean and wading through the littoral: cosmopolitan visions in Amitav Ghosh’s ‘antique land’ and ‘tide country’. Cultural Dynamics, 24(2-3), 189-205.
    DOI
    2012 Samuelson, M. (2012). Abdulrazak Gurnah’s fictions of the Swahili coast: littoral locations and amphibian aesthetics. Social Dynamics, 38(3), 499-515.
    DOI Scopus13 WoS10
    2012 Samuelson, M. (2012). Textual subjects in motion: letters, literature and print medium in an Indian-South African exchange (1928-1946). PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 9(1), 1-19.
    DOI
    2012 Samuelson, M. (2012). Nature and/as Thing(s) in the Emergent Literary City. The Johannesburg Salon, 5.
    2011 Samuelson, M., & Musila, G. (2011). Locations and locutions: Which Africa, whose Africa?. Social Dynamics, 37(3), 424-426.
    DOI Scopus3 WoS3
    2011 Samuelson, M. (2011). Orienting the Cape: a 'white' woman writing Islam in South Africa. Social Dynamics, 37(3), 363-378.
    DOI Scopus4 WoS5
    2011 Samuelson, M. (2011). Reading Zoë Wicomb's cosmopolitan, domestic and recursive settings. Current Writing, 23(2), 88-92.
    DOI Scopus1
    2011 Samuelson, M. (2011). Vera, Yvonne.
    DOI
    2011 Transitions & Translations Research. (2011). Theorising Africa in local and global imaginaries: a PANGeA workshop. SOCIAL DYNAMICS-A JOURNAL OF THE CENTRE FOR AFRICAN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN, 37(3), 430-433.
    DOI
    2010 Samuelson, M. (2010). Oceanic histories and protean poetics: The surge of the sea in Zoë Wicomb's fiction. Journal of Southern African Studies, 36(3), 543-557.
    DOI Scopus14 WoS9
    2010 Samuelson, M. (2010). (Un)settled states: Indian Ocean passages, performative belonging and restless mobility in post-apartheid South African fiction. Social Dynamics, 36(2), 272-287.
    DOI Scopus10 WoS9
    2010 Samuelson, M. (2010). Scripting connections: Reflections on the 'post-transitional'. English Studies in Africa, 53(1), 113-117.
    DOI Scopus15 WoS18
    2010 Gamba, H., Michael, C. A., & Samuelson, M. (2010). Symposium: Global Africa: Travels, transfer, transformation Festschrift for Brenda Cooper: Introduction. Social Dynamics, 36(2), 235-238.
    DOI
    2009 Samuelson, M. (2009). Editorial: Social Dynamics. Social Dynamics, 35(2), 211-212.
    DOI
    2008 Samuelson, M. (2008). 'Lose your mother, kill your child': The passage of slavery and its afterlife in narratives by Yvette Christiansë and Saidiya Hartman. English Studies in Africa, 51(2), 38-48.
    DOI Scopus12 WoS10
    2008 Samuelson, M. (2008). Walking through the door and inhabiting the house: South African literary culture and criticism after the transition. English Studies in Africa, 51(1), 130-137.
    DOI Scopus17 WoS25
    2008 Samuelson, M. (2008). The urban palimpsest: Re–presenting Sophiatown. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 44(1), 63-75.
    DOI Scopus17
    2007 Samuelson, M. (2007). Re-imagining South Africa via a passage to India: M.K. Jeffreys's archive of the Indian Ocean world. Social Dynamics, 33(2), 61-85.
    DOI Scopus7 WoS8
    2007 Samuelson, M. (2007). The city beyond the border: the urban worlds of Duiker, Mpe and Vera. African Identities, 5(2), 247-260.
    DOI
    2007 Samuelson, M. (2007). The disfigured body of the female guerrilla: (De)militarization, sexual violence, and redomestication in Zoë Wicomb's David's Story. Signs, 32(4), 833-856.
    DOI Scopus25 WoS16
    2007 Samuelson, M. (2007). Yvonne Vera's Bulawayo: modernity, (im)mobility, music and memory. Research in African Literatures, 38(2), 22-35.
    DOI Scopus12 WoS7
    2007 Driver, D., & Samuelson, M. (2007). History's Intimate invasions: Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins. English Studies in Africa, 50(2), 101-120.
    DOI Scopus5 WoS4
    2007 Viljoen, S., & Samuelson, M. (2007). Editorial. Social Dynamics, 33(2), 1-2.
    DOI WoS3
    2007 Samuelson, M. (2007). South African Literatures in the Indian Ocean World. Quarterly Changbi, 130-133.
    2007 SAMUELSON, M. E. G. (2007). Katrin Berndt, (Bayreuth African Studies 73; Bayreuth: Thielmann & Breitinger, 2005). ISBN 3-927510-88-2, € 29.95.. Matatu, 34(1), 233-235.
    DOI
    2007 Samuelson, M. (2007). Apartheid and beyond: South African writers and the politics of place. SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL, (58), 304-305.
    2006 Samuelson, M. (2006). Rewriting modernity: Studies in black South African literary history. JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN AFRICAN STUDIES, 32(3), 638-639.
    2006 Samuelson, M. (2006). Historical Time, Gender and the “New” South Africa in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness. Global South, 2(2), 15-18.
    2006 Samuelson, M. (2006). Memory, Mourning and Melancholia: Post-Conflict Fiction from Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Journal of Social Studies, 111, 1-20.
    2005 Samuelson, M. (2005). Sala Kahle, Yvonne Vera. Current Writing, 17(2), 1-2.
    DOI
    2005 Samuelson, M. (2005). “Home and the world”: The contestation of social fictions in three South African women's memoirs. English Academy Review, 22(1), 32-42.
    DOI Scopus2
    2005 Distiller, N., & Samuelson, M. (2005). "Denying the Coloured Mother": Gender and Race in South Africa. L'Homme, 16(2).
    DOI
    2005 Samuelson, M. (2005). 'Home and the world': three South African women's memoirs and the contestation of social fictions. English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies, 22, 32-42.
    2003 Samuelson, M. (2003). Cracked vases and untidy seams: Narrative structure and closure in the truth and reconciliation commission and South African Fiction. Current Writing, 15(2), 63-76.
    DOI Scopus7
    2002 Samuelson, M. (2002). The rainbow womb: rape and race in South African fiction of the transition. Kunapipi, 24(1-2), 88-100.
    2000 Samuelson, M. (2000). Reading the Maternal Voice in Sindiwe Magona's To My Children's Children and Mother to Mother. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 46(1), 227-245.
    DOI
    — Samuelson, M. (n.d.). A community of letters on the Indian Ocean rim: Friendship, fraternity and (Af-filial) love. English in Africa, 35(1).
    DOI
    — Dooley, G., Boehmer, E., & Samuelson, M. (n.d.). Writing southern spaces: or, Grappling with Patriarchy in Darkest Africa: Elleke Boehmer in conversation with Gillian Dooley and others. Writers in Conversation, 6(2).
    DOI

  • Books
    Year Citation
    2021 Samuelson, M. (2021). Claiming the City in South African Literature. Routledge.
    2007 Samuelson, M. (2007). Remembering the Nation, Dismembering Women? Stories of the South African Transition. Scottsville, South Africa: U of KwaZulu-Natal P.
    2004 Rasebotsa, N., Samuelson, M., & Thomas, K. (2004). Nobody Ever Said AIDS Poems and Stories from Southern Africa.

  • Book Chapters
    Year Citation
    2021 Samuelson, M. (2021). "Re-enchanting the world" from Mozambique: the African Anthropocene and Mia Couto's Poetics of the Planet. In S. Cooke, & P. Denney (Eds.), Transcultural Ecocriticism: Indigenous, Romantic and Global Perspectives.. Bloomsbury..
    2021 Samuelson, M. (2021). Blueness and Light in the Art of Gail Jones. In A. Uhlmann (Ed.), Inner Worlds: The Fiction of Gail Jones. University of Sydney Press.
    2021 Samuelson, M., & Gupta, P. (2021). Accepted 16/09/2020 Moving Frames and Circulating Subjects: Reflections on Capital Art Studio, Zanzibar. In A. M. Leite, & M. Banasiak (Eds.), Indian Ocean Circulations and Representations. Peter Lang.
    2020 Samuelson, M. (2020). Coastal Thought: An Alphabet Spanning the Seas.. In M. Arnold, C. Duboin, & J. Misrahi-Barak (Eds.), Borders and Ecotones in the Indian Ocean: Cultural and Literary Perspectives.. Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée.
    2020 Samuelson, M. (2020). The Oceans. In S. Helgesson, B. Neumann, & G. Rippl (Eds.), Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures (Vol. 13, pp. 375-393). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
    DOI Scopus1
    2020 Samuelson, M. (2020). Scenes and settings: Foe, boyhood, youth, slow man. In J. Zimbler (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Coetzee (pp. 29-44). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
    DOI
    2019 Samuelson, M. (2019). Poaching plots, plastic forms and ambiguous goods: Ways of telling the China-in-Africa story in the Anthropocene Age. In U. Ruppert, & R. Anthony (Eds.), Reconfiguring Trans-Regionalism in the Global South – African Asian Encounters. (pp. 97-116). London, United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan.
    DOI
    2019 Samuelson, M. (2019). Coastal Form: Writing from the African Indian Ocean Littoral. In F. E. Nabutanyi, D. S. Kahyana, & D. Dipio (Eds.), Discourse and Identity: Writing and Contemporary Eastern African Peripheral Subjectivities. Kampala: Fountain Press.
    2019 Samuelson, M. (2019). Forma costeira: posições anfíbias, mundos maiores e horizontes planetários no litoral do Oceano Índico africano’. In A. M. Leite, E. Brugioni, & J. Falconi (Eds.), Estudos Sobre O Oceano Índico: Antologia de Textos Teóricos (pp. 141-154). Lisboa: Biblioteca National de Portugal.
    2017 Samuelson, M. (2017). Unsettling Homes and the Provincial-Cosmopolitan Point of View in Zoë Wicomb’s October. In D. Attridge, & K. Easton (Eds.), Zoë Wicomb and the Translocal. New York; USA: Routledge.
    2016 Samuelson, M. (2016). Literary inscriptions on the South African beach: Ambiguous settings, ambivalent textualities. In The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures: Reading Littoral Space (pp. 121-138). Routledge.
    DOI Scopus1
    2015 Samuelson, M. (2015). Literary inscriptions on the South African Beach: Ambiguous settings, ambivalent textualities. In U. Kluwick, & V. Richter (Eds.), The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures: Reading Littoral Space (pp. 121-138). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
    Scopus1
    2015 Samuelson, M. (2015). Crossing the Indian Ocean and wading through the littoral: cosmopolitan visions in Amitav Ghosh's 'antique land' and 'tide country'. In S. Gabriel, & F. Rosa (Eds.), Cosmopolitan Asia: Littoral Epistemologies of the Global South (pp. 105-122). London: Routledge.
    DOI Scopus2
    2013 Samuelson, M. (2013). Historical Time, Gender and the ‘New’ South Africa in Zakes Mda’s Heart of Redness’.. In S. Sen, & K. Ghani (Eds.), Exploring the Global South: Voices, Ideas, Histories. Ed. Samita Sen and Kashshaf Ghani. (pp. 111-117). Amsterdam: Global South SEPHIS.
    2012 Samuelson, M. (2012). Textual circuits and intimate relations: A community of letters across the Indian Ocean. In A. Van der Vlies (Ed.), Print, Text and Book Histories in Southern Africa (pp. 87-108). Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
    2012 Samuelson, M. (2012). Writing women. In D. Attwell, & D. Attridge (Eds.), The Cambridge History of South African Literature (pp. 757-778). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus2
    2012 Samuelson, M. (2012). Writing women. In The Cambridge History of South African Literature (pp. 757-778). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI
    2010 Samuelson, M. (2010). The Urban Palimpsest: Re-Presenting Sophiatown. In R. Primorac (Ed.), African City Textualities (pp. 63-75). London: Routledge.
    2010 Samuelson, M. (2010). Cceanic charades: the female figures of M.K. Jeffreys's Passage to India. In Hofmeyr, & P. Gupta (Eds.), Eyes Across the Water: Navigating the Indian Ocean. University of South Africa Press.
    2010 Samuelson, M. (2010). Making home on the Indian Ocean rim: relocations in South African literature. In A. Jamal, & S. Moorthy (Eds.), Indian Ocean Studies: Cultural, Social and Political Perspectives (pp. 298-317). Routledge.
    DOI Scopus3
    2009 Samuelson, M. (2009). Nongqawuse, National Time and (Female) Authorship in The Heart of Redness. In Ways of Writing: Critical Essays on Zakes Mda (pp. 229-253). Scottsville, South Africa: U of KwaZulu-Natal P.
    2008 Samuelson, M. (2008). The Disfigured Body of the Female Guerrilla: (De)Militarization, Sexual Violence and Re-Domestication in Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story. In K. Alexander, & M. Hawkesworth (Eds.), War & Terror: Feminist Perspectives (pp. 88-112). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    2008 Samuelson, M. (2008). The City Beyond the Border: The Urban Worlds of Duiker, Mpe and Vera.. In F. Demissie (Ed.), Postcolonial African Cities. Imperial Legacies and Postcolonial Predicament. London: Routledge.
    2006 Samuelson, M. (2006). Fictional Representations of Rape in South African Fiction of the Transition. In Africa, Europe, and (Post)Colonialism: Racism, Migration and Disapora in African Literatures (pp. 183-193). Bayreuth, Germany: Bayreuth University.
    2005 Samuelson, M. (2005). Crossing borders with words: Sello Duiker, Phaswane Mpe & Yvonne Vera. In M. Mzamane (Ed.), Words Gone Two Soon (pp. 196-201). Johannesburg: Skotaville Press.
    2004 Samuelson, M. (2004). The Mother-as-Witness: Reading 'Mother to Mother' alongside South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In S. Koyana (Ed.), Sindiwe Magona: The First Decade (pp. 127-144). Pietermarizburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal.
    2004 Driver, D., & Samuelson, M. (2004). History's intimate invasions: Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins. In B. Weiss (Ed.), The end of unheard narratives: contemporary perspectives on Southern African literatures (pp. 175-208). Heidelberg: Kalliope.
    2003 Driver, D. (2003). Schreiner, Oliver Emilie Albertina. In Encyclopedia of African literature (1st ed., pp. 484). Routledge.
    DOI
    2002 Samuelson, M. (2002). 'A River in My Mouth': Writing the Voice in Under the Tongue. In Sign and Taboo: Perspectives on the Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera (pp. 15-24). Oxford, England: Currey.
    2002 Samuelson, M. (2002). Re-Membering the Body: Rape and Recovery in Without a Name. In Sign and Taboo: Perspectives on the Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera (pp. 93-100). Oxford, England: Currey.
    2001 Samuelson, M. (2001). Lifting the Veil of Romance: A Reading of Lord Jim. In Conrad at the Millennium: Modernism, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism (pp. 345-360). Boulder, CO--Lublin, Poland: Social Science Monographs--Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.
    — Samuelson, M. (n.d.). Vera, Yvonne. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
    DOI

  • Original Creative Works
    Year Citation
    2018 Authors: Samuelson M. Title: Beach. Description: N/A. Extent: online publication.

Named research project grants:

  • Between Indian and Pacific Oceans: Reframing Australian Literatures. Australia Research Council (ARC) Special Research Initiative in Australian Culture, History and Society, 2021-2023 (SR200200704). Value: $178,000 Chief Investigator (lead CI: Mandy Treagus)
  • South African Settings and Australian Connections. Faculty Research Active Grant Scheme (FRAGS), Faculty of Arts, The University of Adelaide, 2017. Value: AU$5,000.
  • African Textualities: Mobilities, Translations, Frames. African Collaboration Grant, Programme for the Enhancement of Research Capacity, University of Cape Town, 2014-2016. Value: ZAR175,000.00. 
  • Coastal Cultures, Oceanic Africa & Thinking from the Cape: Literary and Cultural Positions. National Research Foundation (NRF), South Africa. Competitive Programme for Rated Researchers (CPRR), 2014-2016 (Grant Number 87809). Value: ZAR400,000.00 plus ZAR320,000.00 in graduate funding.
  • Intimate Relations between South Africa and South (East) Asia. Stellenbosch University Research Grant Award, 2009-2010. Value: ZAR50,000.00.
  • Southern African Subjectivities: Roots and Routes in Literary and Cultural Studies. Thuthuka Programme for emerging researchers, National Research Foundation (NRF), South Africa, 2006-2011. Value: approx. ZAR200,000.00 plus approx. ZAR1.5 million in graduate/staff development funding.

Current

  • ENGL2071-Anthropocene Arts: Nature-Cultures in Crisis. Offered in S1 in even years. 
  • ENGL3106-Writing Southern Worlds. Offered in S1 in odd years.
  • ENGL3050-Ways of Reading (English Major Capstone Course). Offered in S2 annually. 

Previous

  • ENGL4001-English Honours Critical Thinking (2017-2020)
  • ENGL4003-English Honors Thesis (2018)
  • ENGL1016-Landmarks in Literature (2017)
  • ENGL2047-World Literatures in English (2017)
    Expand

  • Current Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)
    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    2021 Principal Supervisor A Woman is a State (Poet as Vandal): An intersectional feminist reading of Major Mitchell’s Australia Felix expedition and the production of a colonial poetics to legitimize dispossession Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Verity Rose Oswin
    2021 Principal Supervisor Figuring the Sea, Inland: Oceanic Imaginaries in Contemporary Australian Literature Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Theodora Galanis
    2020 Principal Supervisor Fishing in Moby-Dick, Omeros, and Carpentaria Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Matthew Hunter Couper
    2019 Principal Supervisor Mapping the Murray: a Bioregional Approach to Character and Narrative Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Owen John Everitt
    2019 Co-Supervisor A Search for Country in Australian Literature Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Samuel Jesse Cox
    2019 Principal Supervisor Reading-as-Witnessing in the Trans-Indigenous Literacy Archive: a Study of Lee Maracle and Alexis Wright Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Laura Rose Hamilton
    2018 Principal Supervisor 'The Other in Ourselves': The Ethics, Aesthetics, and Epistemologies of Feminist (Auto) Ethnography Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Miss Celine Michelle Zerna
    2018 Principal Supervisor Iya Kafayat: A Novel (Creative Component)
    A Grammar of Play in a Postcolongy of a Postcolony (Exegesis)    		 Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Olujide Babatunde Adebayo-Begun

  • Past Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)
    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    2017 - 2021 Co-Supervisor Kookaburra: anti-tales of laughing doom
    Volume 1 and Volume 2    		 Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Gretta Jade Mitchell
    2017 - 2021 Principal Supervisor From Zero Hour to Kudzucene: Reading Margaret Atwood's Post-Millennial Novels under the Auspices of Anthropocene Thought Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Ruby Rose Niemann
    2017 - 2019 Co-Supervisor The Poetic Invitation: Exploring manifold experience in easy poems Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mr Paul Turley

  • Other Supervision Activities
    Date Role Research Topic Location Program Supervision Type Student Load Student Name
    2018 - ongoing External Supervisor Antagonistic Reading: Vilifying Readers in Modernist and Global Anglophone Fiction. University of Notre Dame (USA) — Doctorate — Eric Williams
    2016 - ongoing External Supervisor Littoral literatures: amphibious politics in South African writings University of Cape Town — Doctorate Full Time Maria Geustyn
    2016 - 2017 Principal Supervisor Stories "lodged in goods": Reading the thing-culture of The Thousand and One Nights University of Cape Town — Master Full Time Sophy Kohler
    2016 - 2017 Principal Supervisor From "sad black stories" to "useful tragedy": Trajectories of hope in Johannesburg in Kgebetli Moele's Room 207 and Perfect Hlongwane's Jozi University of Cape Town — Master Full Time Kathleen Samson
    2016 - 2016 Principal Supervisor Creating an African Literary Canon University of Cape Town — Postdoctorate Full Time Doseline Wanjiru Kiguru
    2016 - 2016 Principal Supervisor Archipelagic fictions: Sindbad the Sailor, Alan Villiers and travel in the Indian Ocean University of Cape Town — Master Full Time Andrew Hofmeyr
    2015 - 2016 Principal Supervisor EcoGothic fiction from Contemporary Urban Africa: Excluded Subjects and Dark Environmentalism University of Cape Town — Master Full Time Esthie Hugo
    2015 - 2016 Principal Supervisor Reading Petrocultures in the Niger Delta: An Eco-Critical Enquiry University of Cape Town — Postdoctorate Full Time Philip Onos Aghoghovwia
    2014 - 2017 Principal Supervisor Return to the Scene of the Crime: Representing Homecoming in Postcolonial Fiction University of Cape Town — Doctorate Full Time Kamil Naicker
    2013 - 2016 Principal Supervisor Power and Transgression: Margins, Crossings and Monstrous Women in Selected Works of Bharati Mukherjee and Angela Carter University of Cape Town — Doctorate Full Time Corinne Abel
    2013 - 2016 Principal Supervisor "My name is Afrika": Setswana Genealogies, Trans-Atlantic Interlocutions, and NOW-Time in Keorapetse Kgositsile's Life and Work University of Cape Town — Doctorate Full Time Portia Uhuru Phalafala
    2013 - 2013 Principal Supervisor Imagining Postcolonial Urban Space in Work by Ivan Vladislavic and other Southern African Writers University of Cape Town — Postdoctorate Full Time Kudzayi Ngara
    2011 - 2015 Principal Supervisor Zimbabwe Women Writers from 1950 to the Present: Re-creating Gender Images University of Stellenbosch — Doctorate Full Time Faith Mkwesha
    2011 - 2013 Principal Supervisor The Art of Looking Sideways: Representations of Slave Subjectivity in Post-Apartheid Fiction University of Stellenbosch — Master Full Time Maria Geustyn
    2011 - 2013 Co-Supervisor The Narrativisation of Post-2000 Zimbabwe in the Shona Popular Song-Genre: An Appraisal Approach University of Stellenbosch — Doctorate Full Time Mickias Musiyiwa
    2011 - 2012 Principal Supervisor Spicing South Africa: Representations of Food and Culinary Traditions in Post-Apartheid Literature, Cookery Books and Art University of Stellenbosch — Master Full Time Esthie de Beer
    2011 - 2012 Principal Supervisor White Women Writing the (Post)Colony: Creolité, Home and Estrangement in Novels by Marguerite Duras, Jean Rhys and Marlene van Niekerk University of Stellenbosch — Master Full Time Caren van Houwelingen
    2010 - 2014 Principal Supervisor Writing Women in Uganda and South Africa: Emerging narratives from post-repressive states University of Stellenbosch — Doctorate Full Time Lynda Gichanda Spencer
    2010 - 2013 Principal Supervisor Confession, Ethics and Embodiment in the Poetry of Joan Metelerkamp and Antjie Krog University of Stellenbosch — Doctorate Full Time Christine Weyer
    2010 - 2013 Principal Supervisor Imagining the Zimbabwean City: 1950 to 2010 University of Stellenbosch — Doctorate Full Time Kizito Z. Muchemwa
    2010 - 2013 Principal Supervisor Diasporic Imaginaries: Memory and Negotiation of Belonging in East African and South African Indian Narratives University of Stellenbosch — Doctorate Full Time James Ocita
    2010 - 2011 Principal Supervisor Marginality in Post-TRC Texts: Storytelling and Representational Acts University of Stellenbosch — Master Full Time H. Grace Kim
    2010 - 2010 Principal Supervisor Bearing Witness to Trauma: Representations of the Rwandan Genocide', Stellenbosch University University of Stellenbosch — Master Full Time Karin Samuel
    2009 - 2009 Principal Supervisor Re-visiting History, Re-discovering Identity in Black British Fictions of the 21st Century: Caryl Phillips's A Distant Shore and Buchi Emecheta's The New Tribe University of Stellenbosch — Master Full Time Sydoine Moudouma
    2008 - 2018 External Supervisor Speaking Others-Speaking the Self: A Study of the Textual Construction of Selfhood in Three South African Texts Linnaeus University — Doctorate Part Time Jenny Simeus
    2008 - 2010 Principal Supervisor Romantic Children, Brazen Girls? An Exploration of the Girl-child's Representation in and around Nabokov's Lolita and Three Derivative Novels University of Stellenbosch — Master Part Time Sandra Visser
    2008 - 2010 Co-Supervisor An Examination of Prison, Criminality and Power in Selected Contemporary Kenyan and South African Narratives University of Stellenbosch — Doctorate Full Time Isaac Ndlovu
    2008 - 2009 Principal Supervisor Becoming the Third Generation: Negotiating Modern Selves in Nigerian Bildungsromane of the 21st Century University of Stellenbosch — Master Full Time W. Jaco Smit
    2008 - 2009 Principal Supervisor Grace and The Township Housewife: Excavating Black Women's Magazines from the 1960s University of Stellenbosch — Master Full Time Nicolette Louw
    Expand

  • Committee Memberships
    Date Role Committee Institution Country
    2019 - ongoing Member The JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice Management Committee The University of Adelaide Australia
    2019 - ongoing Chair School of Humanities Research Committee The University of Adelaide Australia
    2019 - ongoing Member Faculty of Arts Research Committee The University of Adelaide Australia
    2019 - ongoing Member Higher Degree Research Committee Faculty of Arts, University of Adelaide Australia
    2016 - 2017 Member University Book Award Committee University of Cape Town South Africa
    2016 - 2017 Member Hosting a Conference Committee University of Cape Town South Africa
    2016 - 2017 Chair Departmental Research Committee University of Cape Town South Africa
    2016 - 2016 Member Panel of Judges-UJ Prize for South African Writing University of Johannesburg South Africa
    2016 - 2016 Member Specialist Committee for Evaluation and Rating: Literary Studies, Languages and Linguistics National Research Foundation South Africa
    2014 - 2016 Member Faculty Staffing Committee University of Cape Town South Africa
    2014 - 2015 Chair Departmental Advisory & Management Committee University of Cape Town South Africa
    2014 - 2015 Member Dean's Advisory Committee University of Cape Town South Africa
    2013 - 2016 Member Faculty Masters Dissertation Examination Committee University of Cape Town South Africa
    2013 - 2013 Chair Departmental Research Committee University of Cape Town South Africa
    2010 - 2011 Member Graduate School Coordinating Committee Stellenbosch University South Africa
    2010 - 2010 Member Faculty Creative Outputs Committee Stellenbosch University South Africa
    2009 - 2011 Member Faculty Research Committee Stellenbosch University South Africa
    2008 - 2011 Member Departmental Postgraduate Committee Stellenbosch University South Africa

  • Memberships
    Date Role Membership Country
    2018 - 2022 Member Oceanic Humanities for the Global South, University of Witwatersrand South Africa
    2017 - ongoing Member JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide Australia
    2017 - ongoing Member Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender, University of Adelaide Australia
    2017 - ongoing Member DIRE (Déplacements, Identités, Regards, Ecritures) Research Centre, Observatory for the Societies of the Indian Ocean, University of Reunion Réunion

  • Consulting/Advisories
    Date Institution Department Organisation Type Country
    2019 - 2019 Yale-NUS College English School or college Singapore

  • Editorial Boards
    Date Role Editorial Board Name Institution Country
    2021 - 2022 Board Member Prose Studies: history, theory, criticism Taylor & Francis United States
    2020 - ongoing Board Member Transnational Literature Bath Spa United Kingdom
    2018 - 2022 Board Member ariel: A Review of International English Literature University of Calgary; Johns Hopkins University Press Canada
    2017 - ongoing Editor Palgrave Studies in Maritime Literature and Culture Palgrave MacMillan United Kingdom
    2015 - ongoing Board Member Bloomsbury's Literature as World Literature Book Series Bloomsbury United States
    2013 - ongoing Board Member Boydell & Brewer's African Articulations Book Series Boydell & Brewer United Kingdom
    2012 - ongoing Board Member Journal of African Cultural Studies SOAS, University of London; Taylor & Francis United Kingdom
    2012 - ongoing Board Member Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies Taylor & Francis United Kingdom
    2012 - 2017 Board Member Social Dynamics-A Journal of African Studies University of Cape Town; Taylor & Francis South Africa
    2011 - ongoing Board Member English in Africa Rhodes University South Africa
    2009 - 2019 Board Member Imbizo University of South Africa; Taylor & Francis South Africa
    2009 - ongoing Board Member Current Writing University of KwaZulu Natal; Taylor & Francis South Africa
    2007 - ongoing Board Member English Studies in Africa University of the Witwatersrand; Taylor & Francis South Africa
    2007 - 2011 Editor-In-chief Social Dynamics-A Journal of African Studies University of Cape Town; Taylor & Francis South Africa
    2007 - 2010 Associate Editor English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies Taylor & Francis; University of the Witwatersrand South Africa

  • Offices Held
    Date Office Name Institution Country
    2019 - ongoing Postgraduate Coordinator (English and Creative Writing) The Univeristy of Adelaide Australia
    2018 - ongoing Research Theme Leader (Transnationalism)--JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice The University of Adelaide Australia
    2016 - 2017 PhD Convenor (Department of English) University of Cape Town South Africa
    2014 - 2015 Head of the Department of English University of Cape Town South Africa
    2014 - 2015 Project Manager: Man Booker International 2015 at the University of Cape Town University of Cape Town South Africa
    2013 - 2013 Postgraduate Convenor (Department of English) University of Cape Town South Africa
    2010 - 2011 Research Theme Leader (Transitions & Translations)--Flagship Project, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences , and PANGeA Africa-wide network Stellenbosch University South Africa
    2008 - 2010 Research Coordinator (English Department) Stellenbosch University South Africa
  • Position: Associate Professor
  • Phone: 83135613
  • Email: meg.samuelson@adelaide.edu.au
  • Campus: North Terrace
  • Building: Napier, floor 6
  • Room: 6 09
  • Org Unit: English and Creative Writing
Connect With Me
External Profiles