Daniel McKay

I am a literature researcher, working primarily in the areas of American fiction writing, Asian American literature, New Zealand literature, postcolonial literatures, and the literature of the Second World War in the Pacific.  I often find myself working on source material, topics, or historical moments that have long been considered marginal, neglected, or sometimes forgotten outright by the majority of a national population.  Examples here would include the first time that South African writers visited Japan, the internment of civilian Japanese in the South Pacific during the Second World War, or the representation of atomic holocaust.  I have also worked to publish literary histories of neglected genres, such as the prisoner-of-war novel, or novels that depict American servicemen in Australia and New Zealand.

The common threads that bind my work together are, most obviously, a focus upon the Asia-Pacific region; an ethical imperative to place different literary & historical traditions in conversation; and a desire to tease out the less obvious perspectives within a given text.  I greatly enjoy communicating these findings to students and colleagues, as well as setting myself the challenge of placing work in scholarly journals and, on occasion, literary / scholarly magazines.  If you see me with my nose buried in a novel, don’t make the mistake of assuming that this is break time.  There’s a high chance that I’m engaged in a session of literary criticism or otherwise judging whether a given work would be worth researching in more detail.

Interested?  Ready for the next step?  A free-to-download example of my work can be accessed through the following URL:

HTTP://WWW.TANDFONLINE.COM/EPRINT/PJJ53FRK3V8BMER2VMIQ/FULL