Stephen Muecke
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Stephen Muecke BA (Hons, Monash), Mes.L (Paris), PhD (UWA) FAHA is Professor of Ethnography at the University of New South Wales, Australia.[1] He studied linguistics and semiotics, completing his PhD on storytelling techniques among Aboriginal people in Broome, Western Australia.
Publications
Muecke's PhD research resulted in Gularabulu: Stories from the West Kimberley, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1983. The storyteller was Indigenous leader Paddy Roe (OAM). They later collaborated on the prizewinning Reading the Country: Introduction to Nomadology (Fremantle, 1984) with landscape painter Krim Benterrak, a postmodern ethnography of Roebuck Plains, near Broome. In 1993 Muecke became the first Professor of Cultural Studies in Australia, at the University of Technology, Sydney, where he worked from 1985 to 2009.
Muecke is a significant proponent of fictocritical writing, the travelogue No Road (bitumen all the way) (Fremantle 1997) being the first Australian monograph in this genre; a later collection is Joe in the Andamans and Other Fictocritical Stories (Local Consumption, 2008). Both books were shortlisted for major literary prizes.
With Adam Shoemaker he edited the writings of David Unaipon, Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines (Melbourne University Press, 2001), and co-edited with Jack Davis and Mudrooroo Narogin the first anthology of Black Australian writings, Paperback, (University of QLD Press, 1990). He identified that the book Myths and Legends of the Aborigines by William Ramsay Smith was actually mainly written by Unaipon.[2]
Cultural Studies research on the Indian Ocean from 2000 has led to Cultures of Trade, edited with Devleena Ghosh (Cambridge Scholars, 2007), and a collaborative work with the photographer Max Pam, Contingency in Madagascar (Intellect, 2012).
Personal life
A descendant of pioneering Germans in the Barossa Valley and Adelaide, Muecke has had three sons, Joe, Hugo and Sebastian with his partner Prudence Black. They live in Sydney, Australia.
Muecke's eldest son Hugo "Mooch" Muecke is a nurse by profession but plays AFL 9s for the Chicken Kickers Football Club (CKFC), gaining notoriety for his vertical leap and ability to score from all areas of the forward 20.