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
Peer-Reviewed Publications
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, 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]
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
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, '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, 310 pp
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
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
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
Research Expertise
Recognition
Representations
Co-editor, Caribbean Literature and Culture (Anglophone), Literary Encyclopedia
ERC Mock Interviews Irish Research Council
Distance supervision of visiting PhD student from Qurtuba University of Science and Technology, Pakistan
External Examiner, PHD, UCC
NUI Travelling Studentships 2019: I was invited for proposal evaluation in the area of Historical Fiction.
External Assessor, appointment panel, Maynooth
Awards and Honours
MA (jure officii)
Memberships
International Association of Inter-American Studies
Irish Association for American Studies