Trinity Centre for Post-Conflict Justice

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Dr. Melanie Otto

Dr. Melanie Otto

Assistant Professor, English

3531896 1355http://people.tcd.ie/ottom

Biography

Melanie Otto received her primary degree from the Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet, Mainz, and her Ph.D from the University of Wales Swansea.

Publications and Further Research Outputs

  • Otto, Melanie , Critique or Ideology? Teaching Theory from the Other America, GAPS 2015 Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts, Westfälische Wilhems-Universität Münster, May 2015, 2015Oral Presentation, 2015
  • Figures in a Foreign Landscape: Aspects of Liminality in Shaun Tan's The Arrival in, editor(s)Dara Downey, Ian Kinane, Elizabeth Parker , Landscapes of Liminality: Between Space and Place, London, Rowman and Littlefield Limited , 2016, pp137 - 151, [Melanie Otto]Book Chapter, 2016
  • Melanie Otto, Reading the Plantation Landscape of Barbados: Kamau Brathwaite's The Namsetoura Papers and Annalee Davis's This Ground Beneath My Feet: A Chorus of Bush in Rab Lands, Journal of West Indian Literature, 25, (1), 2017, p23 - 44Journal Article, 2017
  • "I'm a believer in the dance of change" - Metamorphosis and Mutation in Keri Hulme's Short Fiction in, editor(s)Ashmita Khasnabish , Postcoloniality, Diaspora and Globalization: What's Next?, New York, Rowman & LIttlefield, 2019, pp71 - 86, [Melanie Otto]Book Chapter, 2019
  • Caribbean Quarterly: Irish-Caribbean Connections, 64, 3&4, (2018), 377 - 586p, Melanie Otto, Lee Jenkins, Kim Robinson-Walcott, [eds.]Journal, 2018
  • Melanie Otto, 'Geburt der Voegel', Bingen, Germany, Hildegard Forum, Rochusberg, Bingen, 2016, -Visual art production, 2016
  • Melanie Otto, Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics in the Work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Wilson Harris: A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, CLR James Journal, 23, (1/2), 2017, p135 - 156Journal Article, 2017
  • Melanie Otto and Lee M. Jenkins, "The Ocean in Us": Irish-Caribbean Connections, Caribbean Quarterly, 64, (3&4), 2018, p377 - 391Journal Article, 2018
  • Reading the Colonial Archive through Joscelyn Gardner's Creole Portraits I-III in, editor(s)Evelyn O'Callaghan, Timothy Watson (volume editors) Alison Donnell (general editor) , Caribbean Literature in Transition, vol 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp409 - 425, [Melanie Otto]Book Chapter, 2020
  • Melanie Otto, 'From Artefact to Metaphor: The Work of Emily Carr', The Ontology of the Artefact , http://ontologyoftheartefact.xyz, NCAD/Temple Bar Gallery, 2019, -Digital research resource production, 2019, URL
  • Melanie Otto, Rachel O'Dwyer,Aoife Banks, Nathan Cahill, Kate Friedeberg, The Ontology of the Artefact, NCAD ACW Public Programme, The Ontology of the Artefact, NCAD ACW Public Programme, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, 30 January , 2019, Temple Bar Gallery + StudiosInvited Talk, 2019, URL
  • "Other Ways of Being": Ray Bradbury's 'The April Witch' in Conversation with Jamaica Kincaid's 'In the Night' and Leonora Carrington's 'The Seventh Horse' in, editor(s)Steve Gronert Ellerhoff, Miranda Corcoran , Exploring the Horror of Supernatural Fiction: Ray Bradbury's Elliott Family, New York , Routledge, 2020, pp91 - 107, [Melanie Otto]Book Chapter, 2020
  • Lee M. Jenkins, Melanie Otto, Irish-Caribbean Connections, July 2016, In:Irish-Caribbean Connections, 2016, University College CorkMeetings /Conferences Organised, 2016
  • Melanie Otto, Translating the past: reading the work of Frida Kahlo and Lorcan Walshe, SILAS 2019 Comparisons, Conflicts, and Connections: Ireland and Latin America in the Past, Present, and Future, Trinity College Dublin , 23-26 April 2019, 2019Oral Presentation, 2019
  • Melanie Otto, To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet": The Truth Behind the Mask in the Work of Lorcan Walshe, NeMLA 51st Annual Convention, Boston, 5-8 March 2020, 2020Oral Presentation, 2020
  • Melanie Otto, Artists and Exile: Sam Selvon, Cyril Dabydeen, and Kamau Brathwaite , ICAS 2021, Diaspora in the 21st Century, Virtual Conference, Southern Regional College, Newry, 28 - 30 January 2021, 2021Invited Talk, 2021
  • Melanie Otto, Challenging the Dominance of Words in Postcolonial Ireland: The Visual Language of Lorcan Walshe"s The Artefacts Project, Hunt Museum Lecture Series, Hunt Museum Limerick, 25 August, 2022, Hunt Museum LimerickInvited Talk, 2022
  • Melanie Otto, `The word's challenging opposite': the visual language of Lorcan Walshe"s The Artefacts Project and Museum Pieces, Word & Image, 38, (4), 2022, p348 - 360Journal Article, 2022
  • Melanie Otto, `Untold Stories": The Relationship of Word and Image in the Work of Shaun Tan, Image & Text: a Journal for Design, 38, (1), 2024, p1 - 25Journal Article, 2024
  • Melanie Otto, Returning the Colonial Gaze: A Close Reading of Lorcan Walshe"s Shaman, IAAH/Artefact Symposium 2023, Trinity Long Room Hub, 6 May 2023, 2023Oral Presentation, 2023
  • The Radical Poetics of Kamau Brathwaite"s Sycorax Video Style in, editor(s)Elizabeth M. Bonapfel, Mark Faulkner, Jeffrey Gutierrez, and John Lennard , A History of Punctuation in English Literature Vol III [three volumes], Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025, pp721 - 744, [Melanie Otto]Book Chapter, 2025
  • Melanie Otto, 'The Other Side of the Mirror: Utopian and Heterotopian Space in Kamau Brathwaite's DreamStories', Utopian Studies, 16, (1), 2005, p27 - 44Journal Article, 2005
  • Melanie Otto, 'The Shallow Grave of the Text: African Narratives in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Pauline Melville's 'Erzulie', The Arts Journal, 2, (1), 2005, p15Journal Article, 2005
  • Melanie Otto, A Creole Experiment: Utopian Space in Kamau Brathwaite's 'video-style' Works, Trenton, NJ/ Asmara, Eritrea, Africa World Press, 2009, 310ppBook, 2009
  • The Caribbean in, editor(s)John McLeod , The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial Studies , London/New York, Routledge, 2007, pp95 - 107, [Melanie Otto]Book Chapter, 2007
  • Melanie Otto, 'Pictures of the Floating World: Keri Hulme's Post-Apocalyptic New Zealand', A Ghostly Genre, TCD, October 2008, 2008Oral Presentation, 2008
  • Melanie Otto, 'El Mundo Zurdo: Frida Kahlo's Left-Handed World', Rethinking 'American' Literature, TCD, June 2008, 2008Oral Presentation, 2008
  • Melanie Otto, 'White Creole or Rebel Slave? The Discourse of Slavery in Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark', Creolising Europe, The University of Manchester, September 2007, 2007Oral Presentation, 2007
  • Melanie Otto, 'The Seduction of Walking Away: Marginality and Belonging in Caryl Phillips' The Atlantic Sound and Eavan Boland's Object Lessons', Caribbean Unbound III, Franklin College, Lugano, Switzerland, March 2007, 2007Oral Presentation, 2007
  • Melanie Otto, 'Figures of Transgression in Ian McDonald's The Humming-Bird Tree', Connecting Cultures, Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (KIASH), , The University of Kent, Canterbury, April 2004, 2004Oral Presentation, 2004
  • Melanie Otto, '"Succumbing to the Culture of Death" - Creativity, Spirituality and the Reinvention of the Sacred in Kamau Brathwaite's The Zea Mexican Diary', Writing Europe 2001: Migrant Cartographies, University of Leiden & University of Amsterdam, March 2001, 2001Oral Presentation, 2001
  • Melanie Otto, "Tierra entre medio": Borderlands of Knowledge in the Art of Frida Kahlo, IJASonline, 2, 2010Journal Article, 2010, URL
  • "Pictures of the Floating World: Keri Hulme's Post-Apocalyptic New Zealand." in, editor(s)Helen Conrad O'Briain and Julie Anne Stevens , A Ghostly Genre: Short Fiction and the Supernatural, Trinity College Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2010, pp172 - 188, [Melanie Otto]Book Chapter, 2010
  • Melanie Otto, Review of Khasnabish, Ashmita. Humanitarian Identity and the Political Sublime: Intervention of a Postcolonial Feminist., by Ashmita Khasnabish , CLR James Journal , 17, (1), 2011, p192-195Review, 2011
  • Melanie Otto, Conversations with Kamau Brathwaite, 17-18 September 2010, 2010, TCDMeetings /Conferences Organised, 2010
  • "Wilson Harris, The Palace of the Peacock." , Cristina Sandru, The Literary Encyclopedia. , 2011, [Melanie Otto]Item in dictionary or encyclopaedia, etc, 2011, URL
  • "Lafcadio Hearn, Two Years in the French West Indies." , Cristina Sandru, The Literary Encyclopedia, 2011, [Melanie Otto]Item in dictionary or encyclopaedia, etc, 2011, URL
  • "'That Misty Zone Which Divides Life From Death': The Concept of the Zombi in Jean Rhys's Short Fiction." in, editor(s)Kerry Johnson and Mary Wilson , Rhys Matters: New Critical Perspectives, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp18 pp , [Melanie Otto]Book Chapter, 2013
  • Melanie Otto, A Portrait of the Artist: Sam Selvon in the Work of Cyril Dabydeen and Kamau Brathwaite., Journal of West Indian Literature , 20, (2), 2012, p38 - 53Journal Article, 2012
  • Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of the River, The Literary Encyclopedia, litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32319, 2012, [Melanie Otto]Item in dictionary or encyclopaedia, etc, 2012
  • Jean Rhys, Collected Stories, The Literary Encyclopedia, The Literary Encyclopedia http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1244, 2012, [Melanie Otto]Item in dictionary or encyclopaedia, etc, 2012
  • Kamau Brathwaite, The Namsetoura Papers, The Literary Encyclopedia, litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34636, 2012, [Melanie Otto]Item in dictionary or encyclopaedia, etc, 2012
  • Kamau Brathwaite, Barabajan Poems, The Literary Encyclopedia, litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32309, 2012, [Melanie Otto]Item in dictionary or encyclopaedia, etc, 2012
  • Melanie Otto, Artists and Immigrants: Surreal Environments in Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival' and Einar Turkowski's 'Der Rauhe Berg', Between Places and Spaces: Landscapes of Liminality, TCD, 5-6 June 2014, 2014Oral Presentation, 2014
  • Melanie Otto, ". . . that misty zone which divides life from death": The Concept of the Zombi in Jean Rhys's Short Fiction , School of English Staff-Postgraduate Research Seminar, TCD, January 2013, 2013, School of EnglishInvited Talk, 2013

Recognition

  • MA (jure officii) 2009
  • Irish Association for American Studies present
  • International Association of Inter-American Studies present
  • External referee, University of Valladolid -- I was invited by the University of Valladolid to conduct a pre-viva review a doctoral thesis. 2022
  • Manuscript Peer-Review Cambridge University Press -- research monograph on the Caribbean writer Jean Rhys, Jean Rhys " Threads of her Literary Imagination 2020
  • Peer-Review Interdisciplinary Study in Literature and the Environment 2024
  • External Assessor, appointment panel, Maynooth August 2007
  • Peer-Review Journal of West Indian Literature 2021
  • External Assessor, appointment panel, Maynooth August 2007
  • External Examiner, PHD, UCC May 2020
  • Peer-Review Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 2015
  • Peer-Review Libri & Liberi: Journal of Research on Children's Literature and Culture 2024
  • Peer-Review Philological Quarterly 2020
  • External Examiner, PhD, UCD 2023
  • ERC Mock Interviews Irish Research Council -- I was invited by the Irish Research Council to participate as an expert in my field in the ERC Mock Interviews. 2021
  • Distance supervision of visiting PhD student from Qurtuba University of Science and Technology, Pakistan -- I was invited to act as distance supervisor and assessor for a visiting PhD student from Qurtuba University of Science and Technology, Pakistan. As an expert in my field, I reviewed and commented on a section of the student"s work. July 2020
  • Peer-Review Island Studies Journal 2023
  • Peer-Review Modern Fiction Studies 2019
  • External Examiner, PHD, UCC May 2020
  • Peer-Review Irish Journal of American Studies 2012
  • Peer-Review Modernism/modernity 2013
  • Peer-Review Social Epistemology 2019
  • Peer-Review Mosaic (2x) 2016
  • Peer-Review Interdisciplinary Study in Literature and the Environment 2019
  • Manuscript Review Zed Book -- biography on the Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi, The Steady Gaze of Nawal El Saadawi: A Life in Words and Images 2008
  • Peer-Review Journal of West Indian Literature 2023
  • Co-editor, Caribbean Literature and Culture (Anglophone), Literary Encyclopedia -- The role consists of commissioning encyclopedia entries on key writers and texts in this field as well as editing and publishing submitted entries on the online platform of the Literary Encyclopedia. 2018 - current
  • Peer-Review Central Asia 2020
  • NUI Travelling Studentships 2019: I was invited for proposal evaluation in the area of Historical Fiction. June 2019
  • Peer-Review Interdisciplinary Study in Literature and the Environment 2020