Meg Samuelson

Dr Meg Samuelson

Lecturer

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 at the University of Adelaide as a lecturer in 2017, after having held positions as an associate professor at the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. I have published widely in South African and southern African literary and cultural studies. My current research and teaching interests include: Anthropocene thought; coastal and maritime literary and cultural studies; critical theory and literary debates; Indian Ocean studies; postcolonial literatures, world literature and the southern hemisphere; women's writing and theories of gender. I work primarily on literary texts, but also have projects that focus on photography and film, and other cultural forms.

CURRENT BOOK PROJECTS IN PROGRESS

  • 'South African Literatures: Land, City, Sea'. Manuscript in progress. Under contract: Postcolonial Literature Series, Oxford University Press.
  • 'Amphibian Aesthetics: Writing from the African Indian Ocean Littoral'. Work in progress.
  • 'Photographic Culture in Zanzibar, 1868-2018'. Work in progress, with Pamila Gupta. 

CURRENT ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS (FORTHCOMING OR IN PROGRESS)

  • 'Scenes and Settings: Foe, Boyhood, Youth and Slow Man'. The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Coetzee. Ed. Jarad Zimbler. Forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
  • ‘Poaching plots, plastic forms and ambiguous goods: Ways of telling the China-in-Africa story in the Anthropocene Age’. Re-Thinking African-Asian Encounters. Ed. Uta Rupert and Ross Anthony. Forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan. 
  • 'Thinking With Sharks: Racial Terror, Species Extinction and Other Anthropocene Fault-Lines'. Forthcoming in Australian Humanities Review.
  • 'The Oceanic South', with Charne Lavery. Forthcoming in ELN (English Language Notes).
  • ‘Coastal Form: Writing from the African Indian Ocean Littoral’. Narrative, Agency and Subjectivity: Writing and Contemporary Eastern African Peripheral Subjectivities. Ed. Fred Edgar Nabutanyi, Danson Sylvester Kahyana and Dominca Dipio. Kampala: Fountain Press. Forthcoming.
  • 'The Oceans'. Under preparation for the De Gruyter Handbook on Anglophone World Literatures. Under contract.
  • 'Writing Southern Worlds'. Under preparation for special issue(s) on World Literature: Postcolonial Perspectives.
  • 'Coastal Thinking: Keywords from the Cs'. Under preparation for book collection on Ecotones.
  • ‘Littoral literatures: coastal settings on the African Indian Ocean shore’. Under preparation for book collection 'Literary Environments: Place, Planet and Translation'. Ed. Stuart Cooke and Peter Denney.

See PUBLICATIONS for my published research

RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS, SELECTED & RECENT

Conference keynote addresses

  • Forthcoming. 'Reparative aesthetics: enduring violence and the ethics of care'. Dissensus in the Postcolonial Anglophone World: History, Politics and Aesthetics. Université de Lille, France. January 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, 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. Swiss South African Exchange. 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.

Selected other invited and host/organizer-funded presentations (since 2012)

  • ‘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.
  • ‘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.
  • ‘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.
  • ‘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.
  • ‘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.
  • ‘Thinking with sharks: Race and the Anthropocene in Southern Ocean spaces’. The Climate of Race, WiSER & Penn State University, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 8-9 August 2016
  • ‘Waste and ruination on the beach; and, a toxic love story titled “my surfboard will survive the ocean”’. Toxicity, Detritus and Waste. Global South Dialogues. University of Witwatersrand & University of Michigan, Durban, South Africa, 7-8 July 2016.
  • ‘Amphibian aesthetics: an integrative category for cultural analysis of the African Indian Ocean littoral?’ Cosmopolitan Currents in the Indian Ocean: New Conceptual Models for Studying Cultural Integration and Change. New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 15-17 March 2015.
  • ‘Indian Ocean Surf Zones and the Search for Stoke: Surfaris, Offshoring, and the Shore-break’. Indian Ocean Energies. Workshop II. CISR & WiSER, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 4 July 2016.
  • ‘Reading nostalgia: Zoë Wicomb’s October and literary-critical practice’. Nostalgia, Disenchantment and the contemporary Southern African Literary Imagination. English Department, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, 13 November 2015.
  • ‘Studio days—reflections on the Oza archive (Stone Town, Zanzibar)’. Photography from India and Africa-Collections, Preservation, Dialogue. WiSER, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 18-19 February 2015.
  • ‘Postcolonial studies and the pressures of the present’. DAAD funded seminar exchange. Literature Department, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya, 30 November 2014.
  • ‘Women Writing South Africa’. Public Lecture. Bayreuth International Graduate School for African Studies, Bayreuth University, Germany, 13 November 2012.
  • ‘Oceans in Common and Thinking on the Beach’. The Futures of Nature, Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1-10 July 2012.
  • ‘Nature and/as Thing: Reading the Emergent Literary City’. The Futures of Nature, Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1-10 July 2012.

Selected other plenary and panel presentations (since 2016)

  • ‘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.
  • ‘Southern Ocean blues’. Sustaining the Seas: Fish, Oceanic Space and the Politics of Caring. University of Sydney, 11-13 December 2017.
  • ‘Neoliberal citadels or the city-in-common? From the ‘architecture of fear’ to the practice of care in post-apartheid South African literature’. Mapping the Emotional Cityscape: Spaces, Performances and Emotion in Urban Life, ARC Centre of Excellent for the History of Emotions, University of Adelaide, Australia, 18 September 2017.
  • ‘Blue perspectives on the (post)colonial Anthropocene in two novels from South Africa’. H2O: Life and Death. Symposium. JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide, Australia, 15-16 September 2017.
  • ‘Littoral literatures: coastal settings on the African Indian Ocean shore’. Literary Environments: Place, Planet and Translation. Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Literature. Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia, 17-19 July 2017.
  • ‘Sharks, Racial Terror and Species Extinction: Three Uncanny Objects of the Anthropocene’. Experimental Histories II: Uncanny Objects of the Anthropocene. University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, 5-6 June 2017.
  • ‘Literatures of the World and for the Planet—African Positions: An introduction’. Plenary session of panel ‘Literatures of the world and for the planet’, Ideas of Postcolonial Culture: 17th Triennial Conference of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS). Stellenbosch University & University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 14 July 2016.
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  • Appointments
    Date Position Institution name
    2018 Associate Professor Extraordinary Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch
    2017 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)

Named research project grants:

  • 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.
  • ENGL2047-World Literatures in English (to be replaced in 2019 with 3rd year level course 'Writing Southern Worlds') 
  • ENGL2071-Anthropocene Arts: Nature-Cultures in an Age of Planetary Change (offered in even years)
  • ENGL3050-Ways of Reading (English Major Capstone Course)
  • ENGL4001-English Honours Critical Thinking
  • ENGL4003-English Honours Thesis

 

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  • Current Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)
    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    2018 Principal Supervisor 'The Other in Ourselves': The Ethics, Aesthetics, and Epistemologies of Feminist (Auto) Ethnography Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Celine Michelle Zerna
    2018 Principal Supervisor Creative Criticism Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Terry Peter Hughes
    2018 Principal Supervisor Intersection of History, Memory and Imagination in Fantastical Narratives Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Olujide Babatunde Adebayo-Begun
    2017 Co-Supervisor Malediction - Creative Writing Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Gretta Jade Mitchell
    2017 Principal Supervisor Generational differences in Speculative Perspectives of the Antropocene Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Ruby Rose Niemann
    2017 Co-Supervisor Seeking The Transcendent in Plain Word Poetry 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
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  • Committee Memberships
    Date Role Committee Institution Country
    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

  • Editorial Boards
    Date Role Editorial Board Name Institution Country
    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 - ongoing 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
  • Position: Lecturer
  • Phone: 83135613
  • Email: meg.samuelson@adelaide.edu.au
  • Campus: North Terrace
  • Building: Napier, floor 6
  • Room: 6 09
  • Org Unit: English and Creative Writing
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