Sam Otieno

Professional Bio

Sam Dennis Otieno is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in Comparative Literature and African Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. His research examines African and Black diasporic literature, visual culture, photography, archives, and life writing, with particular interests in the Indian Ocean and Black Atlantic worlds.

His dissertation, Cultures of Self-Visibility in African and Black Diasporic Auto/Biographical Narratives, investigates how autobiographical writing, photography, and other forms of self-representation produce alternative ways of seeing, narrating, and archiving Black lives. His broader research interests include postcolonial studies, global Black diasporas, visual narratives of human rights, and the health and medical humanities.

His scholarship has appeared in journals including Africa, Journal of Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, Cogent Arts & Humanities, and Tydskrif vir Letterkunde. He is also an Associate Editor of Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society. Before beginning his doctoral studies, he taught literature at the University of Nairobi.