PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies

Maria Boletsi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Comparative Literature Department of Leiden University. She received a B.A. in Greek Literature from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, a B.A. in Comparative Literature and an M.A. in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam, and has recently been a visiting scholar at Columbia University. Her dissertation focuses on the operations of the concept of barbarism and the figure of the barbarian in theory, contemporary literature, art and film. She has published articles on C.P. Cavafy, J.M. Coetzee, Jamaica Kincaid and migratory objects in the Balkans in journals such as Comparative Literature Studies, Arcadia and Thamyris/Intersecting. She is also co-editor of the volume Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Ways of Knowing in the Humanities (Cambridge Scholars Press, forthcoming spring 2009), and of The Big Prisma Modern Greek-Dutch/Dutch-Modern Greek Dictionary (Het Spectrum, 2008).

Ipek Celik is a Ph.D. candidate in the Comparative Literature Department at New York University. She holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Bogazici University in Turkey and a Masters degree in Cultural Studies from The Ohio State University. Focusing on the figure of the immigrant in contemporary European media, literature and film, her dissertation theorizes the role played by violence in the representation of ethnically diverse communities in France, Germany and Greece. Her research and teaching extends to minority cultures in Turkey and the Arab Levant. She is a recipient of a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in 2007-08.

Karen Emmerich is a Ph.D. candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University; the working title of her dissertation is Seeing Things: Visual and Material Poetics in the Work of C.P. Cavafy, Miltos Sachtouris, and Eleni Vakalo. She is also a translator of Modern Greek poetry and prose, and has received translation grants and awards from the NEA, PEN, and the Modern Greek Studies Association. Her publications include I’d Like by Amanda Michalopoulou, Poems (1945-1971) by Miltos Sachtouris (nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Prize in Poetry), and The Few Things I Know About Glafkos Thrassakis by Vassilis Vassilikos; forthcoming translations include works by Margarita Karapanou and Ersi Sotiropoulos.

Eirini Kotsovili is working on her doctorate thesis on the writings of post-1974 Greek women authors at the University of Oxford. A graduate of Arsakeion School in Athens, Greece, she holds a B.A. from McGill University (History and Hispanic Studies), and a Masters from Oxford (Modern Languages and Literature). She has presented her work on literature, Modern Greek politics and gender at numerous international conferences, and her “The Dark Side of the Sun: Aegean Islands as Places of Exile, Desolation and Death in the post-World War II Politically Turbulent Greece” (Oxford: Archaeopress) is forthcoming in 2009.

Foteini Lika studied Modern Greek (B.A.) and Comparative Literature (M.A.) at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her Ph.D. (University of Cambridge) concerns the interplay of history, fiction and satire in Emmanuel Roidis’ Pope Joan. She held the Leventis Foundation Ph.D. Studentship in Modern Greek Studies from 2005 until 2008. She was awarded the London Hellenic Society Prize in 2006. She was a lecturer at the Modern Greek Section (University of Cambridge) for Michaelmas Term and Lent Term 2008-2009. She currently is one of the convenors of the Modern Greek Graduate Seminar at the same university. Her research interests include 19th-century and 20th-century historiography and fiction, genre theories, poetics of satire and intertextuality.

Stratos Myrogiannis is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge. He received his B.A. in Modern Greek Philology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and completed his M.A. in Modern Greek Culture and Comparative Literature at the same University. He is currently working on Koraes and the emergence of a Greek identity during the Enlightenment, while he has also worked on Vizyenos and the evolution of the detective story in the nineteenth century (M.A.). He was awarded the London Hellenic Society Prize two times, in 2006 and 2007, for his essays on Meletios and Rhigas respectively. He is the convenor of the Modern Greek Graduate Seminar at the University of Cambridge and he was a lecturer at the Modern Greek Section for the Lent Term 2009. His research interests include modern intellectual history, the history of concepts, the emergence and development of nationalism, philosophy of language and literary theory.  

Born in 1981, Maria Polychrona holds a B.A. in Greek language and literature from the University of Athens (2002) and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from King’s College London (2004). She is currently writing her doctoral dissertation on “The representation of the social margins in Middle-war literature” at the University of Cyprus. She has published articles on various 20th century Greek prose writers (Skarimbas, Kazantzakis, Nikolaides etc) focusing on comparative and theoretical perspectives. She teaches Greek as a foreign language at the University of Cyprus.

Eleonora Vratskidou is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She works on the emergence and social status of the visual artist in 19th century Greece. Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, Eleonora Vratskidou holds a B.A. in History, Archaeology and Art History from Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, and a D.E.A. in History and Civilisations from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Her D.E.A. thesis focused on the discourse of the first art school in Greece in the context of the establishment of the Greek state. Her research interests include issues in museology and she has published on the case of the Greek National Gallery.

Last updated 4/29/09