Susan Kossew

Sue Kossew is Chair of English and Literary Studies at Monash University and was Head of the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies from 2010-13. Her previous academic position was at the University of New South Wales, where she was Head of the School of English, Media and Performing Arts. Her research is in contemporary postcolonial literatures, focussing particularly on the work of J.M. Coetzee and on contemporary Australian and South African women writers, and on the representation of violence in Australian women's writing. Her books include Pen and Power: A Post-Colonial Reading of J.M. Coetzee and André Brink (Rodopi, 1996), Critical Essays on J.M. Coetzee (ed.) (G.K. Hall, 1998), Re-Imagining Africa: New Critical Perspectives (ed. with Dianne Schwerdt, Nova Science, 2001), and Writing Woman, Writing Place: Australian and South African Fiction (Routledge, 2004). She has edited Lighting Dark Places: Essays on Kate Grenville (Rodopi, 2010) and co-edited (with Chris Danta and Julian Murphet) Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction (Continuum, 2011). In 2014, she co- edited, with Dorothy Driver, a special issue of Life Writingentitled ‘Reframing South African Life Narratives’. She is currently working on a research project funded by the Australian Research Council entitled ‘Rethinking the Victim: Gendered Violence in Australian Women’s Writing’ with Anne Brewster (University of New South Wales), an outcome of which is their co-authored book to be published by Routledge. She is co-editing, with Dr Melinda Harvey, a collection of essays entitled Reading Coetzee's Women to be published by Palgrave Macmillan arising from the conference of that title. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and was awarded a Harry Ransom Fellowship for 2016. She has held the position of Distinguished Visiting Chair at the Universities of Copenhagen and Cologne respectively.