Biography
I received my first degree from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, majoring in English and minoring in Philosophy and Comparative Literature. I graduated in 1998, writing my MA dissertation on the novels of Ben Okri. In 2003, I completed a PhD on the work of Caribbean poet Kamau Brathwaite at Swansea University. Since 2003, I have been lecturer in the School of English at Trinity College. I was Director of the MPhil in Literatures of the Americas for many years, and I currently act as Global Director and Coordinator of Visiting Students.
Teaching My teaching interests cover all major aspects of postcolonial studies with a particular focus on Caribbean literature, settler colonialism, Indigenous studies, and comparative literature. I coordinate and teach the Senior Fresh module 'Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction to Key Debates and Texts' and the Sophister options 'The Pain of Unbelonging: Writing from Canada, South America, and the Pacific' and 'Writing from the Creole Americas'. I teach several sessions on the core courses of the School's MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies as well as the MPhil option 'Caribbean Literature'.
Students who completed their PhDs under my supervision have worked on a range of postcolonial topics, including settler colonial narratives in the work or Elizabeth Bowen and Jean Rhys, black gay male identity in the Black Atlantic, the work of Maeve Brennan, and symbolic (dis)order in the works of Derek Walcott, Adonis and W. B. Yeats. I welcome research proposals from prospective students and postdoctoral scholars on any aspect of postcolonial literature.
Research I am a nationally and internationally known expert in postcolonial literatures and leading scholar on poet Kamau Brathwaite (1930-2020), a paradigm-shifting figure in Caribbean and global poetics. My first monograph, A Creole Experiment: Utopian Space in Kamau Brathwaite's 'video-style' Works, a groundbreaking assessment of Brathwaite's poetry, established my reputation as a scholar of Caribbean poetics and aesthetics. I have contributed chapters on Caribbean visual art and poetics to significant series: Caribbean Literature in Transition (2021) and, on Brathwaite specifically, A History of Punctuation in English Literature (in press), both published by Cambridge University Press.
My current scholarship is in the area of word-image research. I have published substantial articles on Australian artist and writer Shaun Tan and on Irish painter Lorcan Walshe. Walshe's signature series The Artefacts Project is a postcolonial intervention in the collections of the National Museum of Ireland. My article on The Artefacts Project, published in Word & Image, relates my work directly to Trinity's Colonial Legacies project. My research and my teaching are comparative and intermedial in methodology. I deepen this approach in my current monograph on writing and its counter-languages art and music in Lorcan Walshe's work.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
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]
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 - 25
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, 2023
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 - 360
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 Limerick
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, 2021
"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]
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]
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, 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, -
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 + Studios
"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]
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, 2019
Caribbean Quarterly: Irish-Caribbean Connections, 64, 3&4, (2018), 377 - 586p, Melanie Otto, Lee Jenkins, Kim Robinson-Walcott, [eds.]
Melanie Otto and Lee M. Jenkins, "The Ocean in Us": Irish-Caribbean Connections, Caribbean Quarterly, 64, (3&4), 2018, p377 - 391
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 - 156
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 - 44
Melanie Otto, 'Geburt der Voegel', Bingen, Germany, Hildegard Forum, Rochusberg, Bingen, 2016, -
Lee M. Jenkins, Melanie Otto, Irish-Caribbean Connections, July 2016, In:Irish-Caribbean Connections, 2016, University College Cork
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]
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, 2015
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, 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 English
"'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]
Kamau Brathwaite, The Namsetoura Papers, The Literary Encyclopedia, litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34636, 2012, [Melanie Otto]
Kamau Brathwaite, Barabajan Poems, The Literary Encyclopedia, litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32309, 2012, [Melanie Otto]
Jean Rhys, Collected Stories, The Literary Encyclopedia, The Literary Encyclopedia http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1244, 2012, [Melanie Otto]
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 - 53
Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of the River, The Literary Encyclopedia, litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32319, 2012, [Melanie Otto]
"Lafcadio Hearn, Two Years in the French West Indies." , Cristina Sandru, The Literary Encyclopedia, 2011, [Melanie Otto]
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, p192-195
"Wilson Harris, The Palace of the Peacock." , Cristina Sandru, The Literary Encyclopedia. , 2011, [Melanie Otto]
"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]
Melanie Otto, Conversations with Kamau Brathwaite, 17-18 September 2010, 2010, TCD
Melanie Otto, "Tierra entre medio": Borderlands of Knowledge in the Art of Frida Kahlo, IJASonline, 2, 2010
Melanie Otto, A Creole Experiment: Utopian Space in Kamau Brathwaite's 'video-style' Works, Trenton, NJ/ Asmara, Eritrea, Africa World Press, 2009, 310pp
Melanie Otto, 'El Mundo Zurdo: Frida Kahlo's Left-Handed World', Rethinking 'American' Literature, TCD, June 2008, 2008
Melanie Otto, 'Pictures of the Floating World: Keri Hulme's Post-Apocalyptic New Zealand', A Ghostly Genre, TCD, October 2008, 2008
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, 2007
The Caribbean in, editor(s)John McLeod , The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial Studies , London/New York, Routledge, 2007, pp95 - 107, [Melanie Otto]
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, 2007
Melanie Otto, 'The Other Side of the Mirror: Utopian and Heterotopian Space in Kamau Brathwaite's DreamStories', Utopian Studies, 16, (1), 2005, p27 - 44
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, p15
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, 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, 2001
Research Expertise
Recognition
Representations
Manuscript Peer-Review Cambridge University Press -- research monograph on the Caribbean writer Jean Rhys, Jean Rhys " Threads of her Literary Imagination
External Examiner, PhD, UCD
External Examiner, PHD, UCC
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.
External Assessor, appointment panel, Maynooth
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.
External referee, University of Valladolid -- I was invited by the University of Valladolid to conduct a pre-viva review a doctoral thesis.
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
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.
Peer-Review Journal of West Indian Literature
Peer-Review Journal of West Indian Literature
Peer-Review Libri & Liberi: Journal of Research on Children's Literature and Culture
Peer-Review Interdisciplinary Study in Literature and the Environment
Peer-Review Interdisciplinary Study in Literature and the Environment
Peer-Review Interdisciplinary Study in Literature and the Environment
Peer-Review Irish Journal of American Studies
Peer-Review Modernism/modernity
Peer-Review Short Fiction in Theory and Practice
Peer-Review Mosaic (2x)
Peer-Review Social Epistemology
Peer-Review Modern Fiction Studies
Peer-Review Central Asia
Peer-Review Philological Quarterly
Peer-Review Island Studies Journal
NUI Travelling Studentships 2019: I was invited for proposal evaluation in the area of Historical Fiction.
Awards and Honours
MA (jure officii)
Memberships
International Association of Inter-American Studies
Irish Association for American Studies