Education
Professional Bio
Sam Dennis Otieno is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and African Studies at Penn State. His research and teaching interests include African and Black diasporic literature, life writing, visual culture and photography, archive studies, and postcolonial and decolonial thought. His dissertation examines how autobiography, photography, performance, and archival practices enable African and Black diasporic subjects to negotiate the racialized regimes through which they are made visible. His work focuses particularly on East Africa, the Indian Ocean world, and the wider Black diaspora. His writing has appeared in Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Journal of East African Literary and Cultural Studies, Cogent Arts & Humanities, and Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, among other venues. Before joining Penn State, he earned an MA in Literature, with a concentration in African American Studies, from the University of Nairobi, where he also served as a lecturer.
Areas of Interest:
Life writing
Popular culture
Textuality
Theory and criticism
Visual narratives
Awards and Fellowships:
Open Society University Network Oral Histories Research Fellowship, June 2021 – May 2022.
Research Publications:
Book Reviews:
Otieno, Sam Dennis. Review of Narrating Kenyan Oceanic Encounters in Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea, East African Literary and Cultural Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 26 May 2021, pp. 113–116., https://doi.org/10.1080/23277408.2021.1896886.
Essays:
Otieno, Sam Dennis. “Down River Road in Contemporary Kenyan Popular Fiction.” Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, vol. 58, no. 1, 14 June 2021, pp. 18–19., https://letterkunde.africa/article/view/9481.
Articles:
Otieno, Sam Dennis. “Archives of a Pandemic: Song and the Mitigation of the COVID-19 Pandemic in East Africa.” Cogent Arts & Humanities, vol. 8, no. 1, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2021.1946245.