Dr. Thomas Waller School of English, Drama and Film University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4 thomas.waller@ucd.ie ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS 2023-2025 Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin 2023 Arts and Humanities Research Council M3C Postdoctoral Fellow School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies, University of Nottingham EDUCATION 2018 – 2022 Doctor of Philosophy, Passed without corrections Department of Modern Languages, University of Nottingham, UK Midlands4Cities (M4C) Doctoral Training Partnership, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Thesis: ‘Spectral Bodies, Dystopian Cities: Literature and Economy in Portuguesespeaking Southern Africa, 1986-2012’ Supervisors: Dr Mark Sabine, Dr Rui Miranda and Dr Emanuelle Santos (University of Birmingham) External examiner: Professor Paulo de Medeiros (University of Warwick) 2017 – 2018 Master of Arts, Distinction Department of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London, UK Dissertation: ‘Worlded Critique: Irrealist Aesthetics in Ondjaki’s Os Transparentes and João Paulo Borges Coelho’s Campo de Trânsito’, supervised by Dr Shital Pravinchandra 2013 – 2017 Bachelor of Arts (Honours), First Class Hispanic Studies and Portuguese (Joint Honours) Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Queen Mary University of London, UK PUBLICATION RECORD Books Monograph, Genres of Transition: Literature and Economy in Portuguese-speaking Southern Africa. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Series: Postcolonialism Across the Disciplines. Under contract, forthcoming 2024. Essay collection, Roberto Schwarz and World-Literature: Critical Essays. Series: New Comparisons in World Literature. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Under contract, forthcoming 2024. Peer-Reviewed Publications Article, ‘Stably Unusual: Artistic Labor and Aesthetic Autonomy’, Qui Parle 32.2 (2023): 395-428. Article, ‘Pessoa, Lacan and the Ethics of Desire’. Portuguese Studies 39.1 (2023): 76-88. Article, ‘Subjects of Exchange: Between Lacan and the Neue Marx-Lektüre’. Rethinking Marxism 35.2 (2023): 180-207. Article, ‘Messianic Failure: Ondjaki and the Form of Critique’, Research in African Literatures 53.2 (2022): 1-20. 2 Article, ‘Literature and Economy in Portuguese-speaking Southern Africa’. Periodizing the Present: The 2020s, the Longue Durée, & Contemporary Culture, special issue of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 24.1 (2022): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.4284>. Book Chapter, ‘Zombie Proletkino: Labour, Race and Genre in Pedro Costa’s Casa de Lava’. Decolonizing the Undead: Rethinking Zombies in World-Literature, Film, and Media. Eds. Stephen Shapiro, Giulia Champion and Roxanne Douglas. London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 106-120. Article, ‘Mozambican Literature, Neoliberalism and the Long 1980s’. Peripheral Literatures and the History of Capitalism, special issue of Modern Fiction Studies 68.1 (2022), 88-116. Article, ‘Spectrality, Marxism and the Critique of Value’. Critique 49.1-2 (2021): 81-87. Article, ‘World Energy Literature: Oil, Finance and Abstraction in João Paulo Borges Coelho’s Campo de Trânsito’. Writing Extractivism, special issue of Textual Practice 35.3 (2021): 413-430. Article, ‘The Blue Cultural Fix: Water-Spirits and World-Ecology in Jorge Amado’s Mar Morto and Pepetela’s O Desejo de Kianda’. World Literature and the Blue Humanities, special issue of Humanities 9.3 (2020): 72. Article, ‘Spectres of a Petrostate: Critical Irrealism and Social Contradiction in Ondjaki’s Os Transparentes’. Marxism and African Literatures, special issue of African Identities 18.1-2 (2020): 109-129. Article, ‘Recreating Resistance: Translating José Luandino Vieira’s Luuanda’. Xanthos: A Journal of Foreign Languages and Literatures 1 (2019): 55-65. Accepted Peer-Reviewed Publications Article (co-written with Peter J. Maurits), ‘The Post-2008 African Novel: Generic Discontinuities, Speculative Form, and Post-Capitalist Futurity’. African Literature and Economics, special issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing 60.1, forthcoming 2024. Book Chapter, ‘Dripping Futurism: Brazilian Modernism and the Aesthetics of Water’. The Routledge Companion to Literature and the Environment. Ed. Sharae Deckard, Treasa De Loughrey, Kerstin Oloff and Claire Westall. London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2024. Book Chapter, ‘Subjective Form: Registration and World-Literature’. Roberto Schwarz and WorldLiterature. Ed. Thomas Waller. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2024. Book Chapter, ‘Negative Exoticism: João Paulo Borges Coelho and the Global Literary Marketplace’. Cultural Labour and Contemporary Literature in Portuguese. Ed. Carlos Garrido Castellano. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2024. Article, ‘Confessional Desire: Censorship and Repression in Mário de Sá-Carneiro’s A Confissão de Lúcio’, Journal of Modern Literature, forthcoming 2025. Interviews Interview, ‘Apresentando o WReC: uma entrevista com Neil Lazarus, Sharae Deckard e Michael Niblett’. A Literatura-Mundial e o Sistema-Mundial Moderno, special issue of Via Atlântica 40.1 (2021), 498-544. Essays Essay, ‘Translatability and the “African Modern” in Mozambican Contemporary Art’. On Translations, special issue of The Contemporary Journal 1 (2019). https://thecontemporaryjournal.org/strands/on-translations/translatability-and-the-africanmodern-in-mozambican-contemporary-art. Reviews Review, ‘The Mozambican Modern Ghost Story: The Genealogy of a Genre by Peter J. Maurits (review)’, Portuguese Studies 38.2 (2022): 96-99. Review, ‘Literary Fictions of the Contemporary Art System: Global Perspectives in Spanish and Portuguese by Carlos Garrido Castellano (review)’, Portuguese Studies 39.2 (2023). Poetry 3 Poem, ‘“Toll” and “Or Eternity”’, Postcolonial Text 18.3, 2023. Poem, ‘Diary from the Third Millennium’, Wasafiri, online, 2020. https://www.wasafiri.org/article/diaryfrom-the-third-millennium-by-thomas-waller. RESEARCH FUNDING AND AWARDS Fellowships Sept 2023 GOI Postdoctoral Fellowship, Irish Research Council, €105,604 (two years). April 2023 Midlands3Cities AHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Nottingham, £16,674 (six months). Scholarships April 2018 Midlands4Cities AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, University of Nottingham £57,111. Queen Mary University of London Arts and Humanities Studentship, £49,659 (declined). Awards Oct Sept 2022 2018 Sept 2015 Certificate in Psychoanalysis, Global Centre for Advanced Studies (GCAS). Comparative Literature Postgraduate Prize for Outstanding Achievement, Queen Mary University of London, £50. Iberian and Latin American Studies Second Year Prize for Outstanding Achievement, Queen Mary University of London, £50. Funding Jan 2020 June 2019 Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership Student Development Fund (SDF), research trip to Maputo, 6-20 January 2020, £3,100. Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership Cohort Development Fund, Spanish Portuguese and Latin American Studies Postgraduate Community Forum, University of Nottingham, 21-22 June 2019, £1,501. Student Experience Fund, University of Nottingham, Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies Postgraduate Community Forum, University of Nottingham, 21-22 June 2019, £450. 2019 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, shortlisted in the category of poetry. Poetry Nov PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS Journal Roles 2023- ... Associate Editor, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 4 Invited Talks Guest Talk, ‘The House of Fiction: Roberto Schwarz, Henry James, and the Politics of Form’. RHOSE — Representations of Home Open Seminar, University of Lisbon. 26 September 2023. Guest Talk, ‘Brazilian Modernism and the Blue Cultural Fix’. Environmental Humanities Virtual Talks Series, University College Dublin. 2 June 2022. Guest Talk, ‘João Paulo Borges Coelho, Autonomy, and the Global Literary Marketplace’. Modern Languages Research Seminar, University of Sheffield. 23 March 2022. Panel Presentation, ‘World Energy Literature: Oil, Finance and Abstraction’. Cultures, Ecologies and Economies of Oil, University of Southampton. 22 July 2021. Guest Talk, ‘Critical Irrealism and World Literature’. Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow. 3 December 2020. Conferences and Symposia • Conferences: Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies Postgraduate Community Forum. University of Nottingham. 21-22 June 2019 (lead organiser). • Roundtables: ‘Keywords for Value and Culture’. Twentieth annual Historical Materialism conference: The Cost of Life Oppression, Exploitation and Struggle in the Time of Monsters. SOAS, University of London, 9-12 November 2023. Participants: Thomas Waller (organiser), Sean O’Brien (University of Bristol), Harry Pitt-Scott (University of Warwick), Harry Warwick (University of Warwick), Savannah Whaley (King’s College London), Samuel Fisher (King’s College London). • Panels: ‘Roberto Schwarz and Dialectical Criticism’. Marxist Literary Group, Institute on Culture and Society: Surplus // Struggle. University of Massachusetts Boston, 12-16 June 2023. Participants: Thomas Waller, Neil Larsen (University of California, Davis), Oded Nir (City University of New York). ‘Roberto Schwarz and World-Literature’. Nineteenth annual Historical Materialism conference: Facing the Abyss: An Epoch of Permanent War and Counterrevolution. SOAS, University of London, 10-13 November 2022. Participants: Thomas Waller, Nicholas Lawrence (University of Warwick), Emanuelle Santos (University of Birmingham). • Presentations: ‘Tarsila do Amaral and the Aesthetics of Nature’. Tenth Association of British and Irish Lusitanists Conference, University College Cork, 7-8 September 2023. ‘A City Called Mirage: Kiluanji Kia Henda and the Spectre of Growth’. Growing Pains: Contemporary Culture and Crises of Growth, symposium, University College Dublin, 2 June 2023. ‘Portuguese-speaking African Writers in the World-literary Marketplace’. Cultural Labour and Contemporary Literatures in Portuguese, symposium, University College Cork, 8-9 July 2021. ‘The Long Waves of Disaster: Flood Epidemics and the Spectre of Aid in Mia Couto’s ‘A História dos Aparecidos’. Flows and Floods: Changing Environments and Cultures, conference, University of Warwick, 22 February 2020. ‘Irrealism in the Balance: Local Specificity and the Aesthetics of World Literature’. Sixteenth annual Historical Materialism conference: Claps of Thunder: Disaster Communism, Extinction Capitalism and How to Survive Tomorrow. SOAS, University of London, 7-10 November 2019. ‘Blue Epistemologies in the Black Atlantic: The Symbolic Economy of Water-Spirits in Jorge Amado’s Mar Morto and Pepetela’s O Desejo de Kianda’. Mapping the Blue Humanities, symposium, University of Warwick, 6 July 2019. 5 EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE Teaching Record Department of Modern Languages, University of Nottingham (2019-2023): • Teaching Affiliate, MLAC1104: ‘Introduction to Lusophone Cultures and Societies’, 1st year module. Conveners: Dr Mark Sabine and Dr Rui Miranda. • Teaching Affiliate, MLAC2087: ‘Brazil, Africa, and Portugal: Discoveries, Empire and Postcolony’, 2nd year module. Conveners: Dr Mark Sabine and Dr Rui Miranda. • Teaching Affiliate, MLAC2110: ‘Hispanic Cinemas’, 2nd year module. Conveners: Dr Mark Sabine, Prof Parvathi Kumaraswami, Dr Adam Sharman. • Teaching Affiliate, MLAC3090: ‘Culture & Society across the Portuguese-Speaking World’, 3rd year module. Convener: Dr Mark Sabine. School of Languages and Cultures, University of Sheffield (2022): • Teaching Associate, HSS237: ‘Nation and Identity in the Lusophone World’, 2nd year module. Convener: Dr Carmen Ramos Villar. REFERENCES Dr Sharae Deckard sharae.deckard@ucd.ie Postdoctoral Advisor Prof Emeritus Neil Larsen nalarsen@ucdavis.edu Collaborator Dr Mark Sabine mark.sabine@nottingham.ac.uk PhD Supervisor