Asimina (Mina) Karavanta
Associate Professor
School of Philosophy
Department of English Language & Literature
Panepistimioupolis, Zografou
EDUCATION
Ph.D. Comparative Literature, State University of New York, Binghamton, May 1999.
The Women of Apartness Re-thinking the “Post” at a Global Moment
Dissertation Committee: Professor William V. Spanos (Director), Carole
Boyce-Davies, Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Daniel T. O’Hara (external reader).
MA Comparative Literature, State University of New York, Binghamton, October 1995.
BA English with Distinction, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Philosophy, Faculty of English Studies, Athens, Greece, September 1993.
CURRENT POSITION Associate Professor of Theory, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Decolonial and Postcolonial Studies, and Global English Literatures. Faculty of English, School of Philosophy, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Head of the Department of English Literature & Culture, 2016-2019
TEACHING POSITIONS
Associate Professor (Tenured), Department of English Literature & Culture. Faculty of English Studies, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2016—
Assistant Professor, Department of English Literature & Culture. Faculty of English Studies, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2008-2016
Lecturer, Department of English Literature and Culture, Faculty of English Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2003-2008.
Visiting Lecturer, Department of English Literature and Culture, Faculty of English Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, September 1999-Spring 2003.
Adjunct Faculty, Department of English Studies, American College of Greece, September 1999-September 2002.
Teaching Assistant, Department of Comparative Literature, State University of New York at Binghamton, September 1995-Spring 1999.
TEACHING INVITATIONS & INTERNATIONAL VISITING SCHOLAR POSITIONS
Kennesaw State University, Faculty of English Studies. May-June 2008. I co-taught with Professor Nina Morgan an intensive course on Theory and Literary Criticism during the period of the Maymester.
Paris X, University of Nanterre. November 2013. I was funded to teach and conduct research for two weeks in the Department of Foreign Languages.
Washington University, Saint Louis. Center of the Humanities, Transatlantic Forum. I was funded by the Transatlantic Forum on Social Diversities at Washington University to conduct research, collaborate with faculty on future research, participate in a postcolonial studies symposium and a Mediterranean Studies workshop, and give one of the keynote lectures of the Transatlantic Series Lectures from March 27-April 1, 2014.
SEMINARS
Salzburg Seminar of American Studies. Salzburg, Austria, October 2002.
Summer School of Criticism and Theory, Post-doctoral Seminar, Cornell University (June 18-July 28, 2000). , Binghamton University, Department of Comparative Literature (October 1994-May 1995).
Seminar on Translation, Binghamton University, Department of Comparative Literature (October 1994-May 1995).
SCHOLARSHIPS & AWARS
Dissertation Year Fellowship, S.U.N.Y at Binghamton, 1998-1999
University Award For Excellence in Research, S.U.N.Y at Binghamton 1998
Full Tuition Waiver and Teaching Assistantship, Department of Comparative Literature, S.U.N.Y at Binghamton, 1995-1999
Fulbright Scholarship, The Fulbright Program, Athens, Greece, 1994-5
Gerondelis Foundation, Scholarship, 1997-8
National & Kapodistrian University of Athens (Klirodotima Papadaki) for Graduate Studies,1994-1999
RESEARCH GRANTS
Arts and Humanities Research Grant (AHRC). Co-ordinator: Joan Anim-Addo, University of London, Goldsmiths. Research Network: “Behind the Looking-Glass: ‘“Other”-Cultures-within’ translating cultures.” 2011-2013
ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES
Co-editor of Synthesis: An Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/synthesis/
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Compulsory Courses (since 2008)
American Fiction, 2nd Semester
Literary Theory & Criticism, 4th Semester
Theory of Culture, 5th Semester
Electives/Seminars (since 2008)
Reading Moby-Dick, 7th Semester
Who’s Afraid of Theory?, 5th Semester
Toni Morrison and Edward Said: History, Fiction and the Role of Secular Criticism, 5th Semester
Rewriting the Canonical Figure: Antigone, Medea and Oedipus in Contemporary Anglophone Literature and Theory, 8th Semester
What is Democracy? Anti-colonial Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries, 8th Semester
Postcolonial Studies and Documentary Film, 7th Semester
Migrant Literature and Photography in the 21st Century, 8th Semester
Postgraduate Programs
MA Program of English Studies
Courses:
Methodologies/Theory Seminar, A’ Semester (2011, 2014 & Fall 2021)
Antigone Between City and Polis in Philosophy, Theory and Postcolonial Theater (2016 & 2018)
Decolonial Approaches to Contemporary Caribbean Writing: Narratives of Dispossession, Migration and Return, Spring 2022
Literary Theory Translation Seminar 2009, 2012 & 2014
Postcolonial Studies Translation Seminar 2011 & 2014
PhD Program of English Studies
Supervisor
Chryssi Marinou, Dissertation Title: “Walter Benjamin, Dorothy Richardson and Henry James: The Gendered Subject in the Metropolis at the Turn of the Century.” 2011-2020
Andrianos Khalil, Dissertation Title: “J.M. Coetzee & Salman Rushdie’s Postcolonial Arc: Forgiveness and the Advent of the Humanimal” 2015-
Efthymis Antonopoulos, PhD Candidate, Dissertation Title: “Postcards from an Amphibian World: Hospitality, Sovereignty and Migration.” 2019—
Georgia Mandelou, PhD Candidate, Dissertation Title: “Topologies of Rule and the Citizen/Subject in the Contemporary African Novel.” 2020—
Elpida Ziavra, PhD Candidate, Dissertation Title: “Poetics and Politics of Mourning and “Survivance” in Trans.Can.Lit.” 2021—
Dissertation Committee Member
Stavros, Kartsonas, PhD Candidate, Dissertation Title: “Kafka, Foucault & Marx: Power, Critique & Becoming.” Faculty of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2019—
Lina Katsorchi, “Visions of the Posthuman: Reconfigurations of Gender and Embodied Transgression in Dystopian Fiction.” Faculty of English, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. 2020—
Athanassios Dimakis, Dissertation Title: ““In a Greek Light": Hellenic Moral Vision in the Philosophy & Fiction of Iris Murdoch.” Faculty of English, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. 2008-2015
Argyroula Manta, PhD Candidate. Dissertation Title: “‘Me, Myself and I: What did it mean to be Emily Dickinson?” 2012-2021
External Evaluator
Aikaterini Symeou, “Queer Palimpsests in Modern Greek Literature”. Department of Education, University of Cyprus, 2021.
Giorgos Giannakopoulos, “Literary Hauntologies: Mourning, Writing, Spectrality.” Faculty of English, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2018.
Dimitris Kassis, “Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature.” Faculty of English, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2014.
Sofia Ghertsou, “Uncommon Belonging: Redefining Identity, Rethinking Community in Contemporary Caribbean Fiction.” Faculty of English, Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, 2014.
Interdepartmental Postgraduate Studies Program, Translation Studies, School of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2009-2015)
Courses
Literary Theory Translation Seminar 2009, 2012 & 2014
Postcolonial Studies Translation Seminar 2011 & 2014
MA Dissertations (main supervisor)
Irene Diamantara, “Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa: The Problematic of Community and the Question of Identity Politics” (2010).
Ourania Tsiakalou, “The End of Sexual Difference? Angels in Salonika: Structural Selves and Spectral Others” (2013).
Olympiou Niovi, “Translating Andre Brinks’s Philida & discussing the historical and political significance of voice” (2015).
Εleni Vgontza, “Translating the Other: Spivak's Other Asias - Questions of Representation and Identity” (2016).
PUBLICATIONS (Refereed Books, Collections & Journals)
EDITED COLLECTIONS
Interculturality and Gender. Joan Anim-Addo, Giovanna Covi & Mina Karavanta. London: Mango Press, 2009.
Edward Said and Jacques Derrida: Reconstellating Humanism and the Global Hybrid. Mina Karavanta & Nina Morgan. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008.
ReSisters in Conversation. Representation, Responsibility, Complexity, Pedagogy. Covi, Anim-Addo, Borghi, Gomez Garcia, Goodman, Grenz & Karavanta. York: Raw Nerve Books, 2006.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Fugitive Sovereignties in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy: Deconstructing the "Unparalleled Catastrophe" of the Human.” Trauma and Literature in an Age of Globalization. Eds. Jennifer Ballengee & David Kelman. New York & London: Routledge, 2021.
“On Behalf of Vulnerable Strangers”: Interpreting Communities-to-Come”. Liquid Borders. Ed. Mabel Morana. New York & London: Routledge, 2021.
“Community.” The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory , Ed. Robin Goodman, London: Bloomsbury, 2019.
“Dangerous Affiliations and Impossible Comparisons: Edward Said’s Transnational Poetics.” Routledge Companion toTransnational American Studies, Eds. Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung and Takayuki Tatsumi. New York & London: Routledge, 2019.
“Unsettling the Heritage of Colonial Modernity: (Im)possible Affiliations in Joan Anim-Addo's Imoinda and SuAndi's Mary Seacole.” Contemporary Black British Women's Writing: Contradictions and Heritages. Deirdre Osborne Ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming.
“Interculturality, Creolization and Joan Anim Addo’s Imoinda as a “Signifying Minority” Narrative in the Age of Transnationalism.” Islands In Between: Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the Caribbean. Ed. Nick Faraklas et al. University of Netherlands, 2014: 45-59.
“SuAndi’s Mary Seacole: A Hybrid Cartography in Libretto.” Hidden Gems, Vol. II, Ed. Deirdre Osborne. London: Oberon Books, 2012. 323-330.
“Interculturality as the Imaginative Genealogy of an Undecidable Present: A Planetary Configuration of the Gendered Subaltern” Interculturality and Gender. 66-95.
“The Global, The Local and the Spectral: Contemplating Spectral Politics,” Samir Dayal & Margueritte Murphy, eds. Global Babel: Questions of Discourse and Communication in a Time of Globalization. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008. 163-188.
“Motherhood’s Cartography of pain: The Subaltern Mother as a Spectral Silhouette of the Fourth World” in C. Laskaratou, A. Despotopoulou & E.Ifantidou, eds. (Re)Constructing Pain and Joy in Language, Literature, and Culture. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008. 211-229.
“The Greek Ideal in Patricia Storace's Dinner with Persephone and Christa Wolf's Cassandra.” Vassiliki Kolokotroni & Efterpi Mitsi, Eds. Women Writing Greece: Essays on Hellenism, Orientalism and Travel. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. 247-268.
«Τα ταξίδια της Θεωρίας στις χώρες του 21ου αιώνα». Απόστολος Λαμπρόπουλος και Αντώνης Μπαλασόπουλος (επιμ.). Χώρες της Θεωρίας. Αθήνα: Μεταίχμιο, 2008: 204-233.
“‘Another Insistence': Humanism and the Aporia of Community” (co-authored with Nina Morgan), Edward Said and Jacques Derrida: Reconstellating Humanism and the Global Hybrid. 324-354.
“Writing the Openness of the Caribbean Sea: Glissant’s Poetics of Relation and Condé’s Performative Writing,” Stephanos Stephanides, ed. Floating Islands. Bologna: Cotepra Foundation, 2003.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
"Fictions of Race and Faith in Caryl Phillips' The Nature of Blood." Blacklines 1 (2021): 91-102.
“Affirmations of Flesh: Toni Morrison’s Gaze into the Human.” Callaloo, Special Issue: “The Neo-Slave Narrative”, Vol.40 No.2 (Spring 2017).
«Τo Απροϋπόθετο και η Φιλοξενία, το Απροϋπόθετο της Φιλοξενίας: «Ιώ Πόλις», Ιδού ο άνθρωπος», Ένεκεν, Οκτώβριος-Νοέμβριος-Δεκέμβριος 2016, Τεύχος 42: 114-133. [“The Unconditional Law of Hospitality: ‘I call the City: Ecce Homo’” Eneken 42 (2016): 114-133. In Greek.]
“Human Together: Into the Interior of Auto/OntoPoiesis.” Posthumanisms: A Special Issue of Symplokē, Vol. 23, No 1-2. http://www.symploke.org/symforth.html. Co-editor of the Special Issue with Nathan Snaza (2016).
“Into the Interior of Cultural Affiliations: Joan Anim Addo’s Imoinda and the Creolization of Modernity.” Synthesis. Special Issue Perspectives from the Radical Other, Eds. Joan Anim-Addo, Giovanna Covi & Lisa Marchi. (7.2015): 66-87.
“William V. Spanos’s Onto-Political Criticism: Risky A-filiations and the Call of the Korē’s Meidiama.” boundary 2, Special Issue, Legacies of the Future: William V. Spanos, Ed. Boundary 2 collective, February 2015, 42:1: 115-139.
“The Illegal Human: Democracy In-Surgent.” Journal of Contemporary Thought. Special Issue, Speaking Truth to Power, Ed. R.Radhakrishnan, Summer 2014, 39: 175-197.
“The Injunctions of the Specter of Slavery: Affective Memory and the Counterwriting of Community.” Affects and Creolization Ed. Joan Anim-Addo & Suzanne Scaffe. Feminist Review (104) 2013: 1-148.
“Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and the Counterwriting of Negative Communities: A Postnational Novel. Modern Fiction Studies, Winter 2012, 58:4.723-747.
“The Right to University: The Question of Democracy in the Polis at a time of Crisis.” Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 2012, vol. 4, issue 1. 45-62.
“Antonio Negri’s Empire and Beyond: The Reformation of the Lexicon of Modernity and the Imagining of a Postnational Imaginary.” The Individual and the Mass. Nikola Rehling, Ed. Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism. 2010 (18).
“The Ontopology of Theory: Envisioning a Community of Singularities,” The Journal of Contemporary Thought. Summer 2006 (23.2): 127-42. Reprinted in Critical Interventions in Theory and Praxis, R.Radhakrishnan, ed. Baroda, India: Center for Contemporary Theory, 2007.
“Sorcery and Story-telling: Reconfigurations of the “Feminine” Nanna-Ya and Pluie et Vent Sur Telumée Miracle” in F. Baider & F. Chevillot (eds.), Women in French Studies. Spring 2003 (11).
“Re-thinking the Specter: Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa Haunting the Post at a Global Moment.” mosaic. December 2001 (34.4): 107-123.
“Against the Idea of (W)holeness: Jacqueline Manicome’s Mon Examen de Blanc & Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Juletane.” Journal of Caribbean Studies. Summer 2000 (14:3).
“An Untimely Poetry: the Call of Haris Vlavianos’ Angel of History.” Gramma. June 2000 (8): 125-139.
SPECIAL ISSUES
“Posthumanisms.” Co-edited with Nathan Snaza. Symplokē, Vol. 23, No 1-2, 2016.
Living Through the Interregnum: Democracy, the Polis and the Subject in Crisis. Co-edited with Maro Germanou. Synthesis (9.2016) http://synthesis.enl.uoa.gr/living-through-the-interregnum-9-2016.html
“New Englishes.” Co-edited with Bessie Denrinos & Bessie Mitsikopoulou. European Journal of English Studies, 12:1 (April 2008).
“The Politics of Rereading.” Synthesis Fall 2008, Issue 1. Co-edited with Mata Dimakopoulou. http://www.enl.uoa.gr/synthesis/issue1.htm
INTRODUCTIONS (special issues and edited collections)
“In the Wake of the Polity to Come.” Living Through the Interregnum:Democracy, the Polis and the Subject in Crisis. Synthesis (9.2016). https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/synthesis/article/view/16221/14489
Introduction with Nathan Snaza: “Human Remains” (2016). Posthumanisms. Co-edited with Nathan Snaza. Symplokē, Vol. 23, No 1-2. http://www.symploke.org/symforth.html.
“Introduction: ‘Humanism, Hybridity and Democratic Praxis’.” Edward Said & Jacques Derrida: Reconstellating Humanism and the Global Hybrid. Co-authored with Nina Morgan. 1-24.
“Introduction: Theorizing New English(es). The Double Contingency of Postcoloniality and Globality.” Co-authored with B.Dendrinos & B.Mitsikopoulou. European Journal of English Studies. 2008 (12:1): 1-14.
“Introduction: Re-reading, Returning and the Quest of the Political.” Co-authored with Stamatina Dimakopoulou. Special Issue of Synthesis: The Politics of Rereading (1.2008): 1-7. https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/synthesis/article/view/16...
“Introduction” ReSisters’ Critical Pedagogy in Europe.” Co-authored with Anim-Addo & Covi. Interculturality and Gender. 7-23.
INTERVIEWS
“Reading Contrapuntally, Living in the Present: An Interview with R.Radhakrishnan.” The Politics of Reading. Synthesis, Fall 2008, Issue 1. https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/synthesis/article/view/16607/14796
“Nomadism, the European Union, and Embedded Identities: An Interview with Rosi Braidotti” with Robert P. Maurice. crossings. Fall 1997 (11:2).
ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS
“Long Lasting Days.” Politics/Letters. February 2018. http://politicsslashletters.org/long-lasting-days/
“The Global, the Local and the Woman-labourer-immigrant: Rewriting the 'Local', Re-thinking the ‘Global’ in Women's 'counter-topographies.’” Clare Hemmings and Ann Kaloski eds., TravellingConcepts.net, York, UK: Raw Nerve Books, 2005. http://www.travellingconcepts.net/Karavanta1.html
“What Happened to Hospitality?” Special Issue, Humanism, A New Idea.The Unesco Courier, October-December 2011: 24-26. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002130/213061e.pdf#page=14
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
“Re-thinking the Post at a Global Moment,”Culture Agonistes: Debating Culture, Rereading Texts. T. Tsimpouki & A. Spyropoulou, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
“Globalization and Its Apparatuses: Reducing the World to a Globe.” The Periphery Viewing the World. Christina Dokou, Efterpi Mitsi & Bessie Mitsikopoulou, eds. Athens: Parousia, 2004. 35-42.
TRANSLATIONS
Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak. Who Sings the Nation-State. New York: Seagull Press, 2007. Editor of the translation into Greek and the translators’ comments and author of the introduction, “For Whom The Bell Tolls? The Human Without Documents and the ‘Right to Rights’” (Athens: Topos Publications, 2015). The first draft of the translation was completed by the graduate students of the Theory Seminar, Interdepartmental Postgraduate Translation Program, Fall 2013.
Haris Vlavianos. Affirmation. Selected Poems 1986-2006. Mina Karavanta, Trans. Dublin: Dedalus Press, 2007. (Translation from Greek into English).
George Steiner, Heidegger. Mina Karavanta, Trans. Athens: Patakis, 2009. (Translation from English into Greek).
Avgoustos Korto. Rena. Patakis, 2021. The translation has been funded by IANOS and has not been published yet.
In Preparation
Monograph
Migrations of the Human, Decolonial Subjectivities in the Long ‘Present
Invited Talks & Keynote Lectures
Keynote Speaker “Spectres of the Aegean.” Tulane University, New Orleans, MENA (Middle East and North African Studies) Lecture Series March 30, 2021. Co-sponsored by the Department of French and Italian, Tulane University. Coordinator: Roberto Nicosia
https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/mena/events
Invited Speaker “Riting Rights: The Apopolis and the Call on the City”, University of Chicago, 2019 Weissbourd Conference, In Search of Asylum: An Interdisciplinary Conference (Απρίλιος 4-5 2019). Invited Speaker.
Keynote Speaker “Dispossession and Hospitality: Towards the poetics of an alternative commons”. Towson University, College of Liberal Arts. Keynote Speaker, Martha A. Mitten Professorship Program and the Graduate Program in Global Humanities (April 2019).
Invited Speaker “Belonging on Behalf of Vulnerable Strangers: Interpreting Communities-to-Come”, Liquid Borders/Fronteras Liquidas, Midwest International Conference on Latin American Cultural Studies, October 2-4 2019, Washington University in St. Louis.
Invited Speaker “Postnational Narrations, Subaltern Imaginaries, and the Specters of Exceptionalism: The Contingency of Community in Toni Morrison’s Paradise and A Mercy.” International Colloquium: L’éxpérience de la contingence historique dans la littérature et les artes (1914-2014). Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 6-7 November 2014.
International Scholar in Residence Public Lecture. “Living in the Interregnum: Democracy and its Rogues.” Center of the Humanities, Washington University, Saint Louis, March 31, 2014.
Invited Speaker “Dangerous Affiliations: The Discomfort Zone of the Postnational.” Transnational Studies Network, Postcolonial Studies Symposium, Washington University, Saint Louis, April 4, 2014.
Invited Speaker “Mediterranean: A New Map of Ghost Ships and Confronted Communities.” Transnational Studies Network, Mediterranean in Crisis Panel, Washington University, Saint Louis, April 3, 2014.
Invited Speaker “Creolization, Multiculturalism, Interculturality and the Global Present.” Other Cultures Within: Beyond the Naming of Things. John W. Kluge Center, The Library of Congress, Washington D.C. April 4 2012.
Invited Speaker “Gender Studies and the Challenges of Interculturality: A Feminist Reconfiguration of the Concept of Community.” (Invited Talk) A Feminist Perspective on a Changing Europe: The Impact of Policies and Concepts on Everyday Life. University of Applied Sciences, Northwestern Switzerland School of Social Work. International Exploratory Workshop 26-28 January 2012.
Keynote Speaker “Imoinda’s Return Act: The Making of Community and the Quest of the Political.” Words from Other Worlds: Critical Perspectives on Imoinda. November 2009, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
SELECTED CONFERENCE PAPERS AND TALKS
“Migration, Hospitality and Decolonial Politics in the Long Present.” 17th ECALALS Triennial Conference: Transcultural Mo(ve)ments: Memories, Writings, Embodiments. Invited Panel: Telling Encounters with Refugees. Panel Organizer and Chair: Helga Ramsey-Kurz. 29-30 June, 2021 (online).
“The Writing Scene”: Jacques Derrida and Sylvia Wynter on Race Thought, Derrida Today Conference 23-27 May 2018, Concordia University, Montreal.
“Transforming the Colonial Scene of Writing: Erna Brodber’s Nothing’s Mat and the Poetics of the Nothing”, Center for Caribbean & Diaspora Studies, Goldsmiths, “Seamed by its own bitter juice’: Voice, Visibility, Literacies’ Tuesday 19 and Wednesday 20 June, 2018 Venue: The Knowledge Centre, British Library, London.
“Refusing to Sink: Interpreting Communities to Come”, Special Session: States of Asylum, Co-ordinator, Jutta Gsoels-Lorensen, MLA January 4-8 2018, New York.
“‘Being Together Without Assemblage’: Nancy’s Imaginary of the Common in the Interregnum.” Being Intimate Political: International Conference On Jean Luc-Nancy. National and Kapodistrian Univetrsity of Athens, 4-5 March 2015.
“Towards an ‘Autopoetics’ of the Common.” Co-chair with Nathan Snaza (University of Richmond) and participant of the special panel, Human Ruins, Posthuman Turns. International Conference: The War on the Human: Human as Right, Human as Limit and the Task of the Humanities. National and Kapodistrian Univetrsity of Athens, 27-29 November 2014.
“Democracy’s Beasts: The Right to Ζωή (zoē).” Democracy, The Other of: A Synthesis Symposium. National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. Organizer: Mina Karavanta on behalf of Synthesis. Athens History Museum, Plaka, Athens, September 2013.
“Into the Interior of the Risky Enterprise of Affiliation: Sylvia Wynter and Michelle Cliff’s Novel (Auto) Poetics.” Perspectives from ‘Other’ Cultures Translating Culture. September 20-22, 2013. Center for Caribbean Studies. University of London, Goldsmiths.
“Expropriation and Exappropriation: The Polity of Specters and the Communities-to-Come.” The Haunted and Postcolonial Present. Global Positioning Systems. American Comparative Literature Association. April 4-7, 2013, University of Toronto.
“Tragedy and Revolution in Édouard Glissant’ Monsieur Toussaint and Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda or She Who Will Lose Her Name.” Reconstructing Caribbean Lives. 10th Bieennial Conference of the Australian Association for Caribbean Studies. February 14-16 Melbourne, 2013, La Trobe University.
“Derrida’s Letter A: The Work Of Ontopolitical Analysis and the Gift of Critical Hospitality.” International Association of Philosophy and Literature (IAPL). Special Panel on Jacques Derrida’s work. June 2012, University of Esthonia.
“Polis and Community: The Unwanted Refugee as the Figure of the Anthropos.” 8th European Feminist Research Conference, 17-20 May 2012. Budapest, Hungary.
“Creolité, Antillanité and “relational” poetics of the Caribbean Diaspora.” Translating Cultures Workshops. Howard University, Washington D.C. April 2-4 2012.
“The European University and the Task of the Humanities in a post-Europe: The Work and the Even of an Intercultural, Planetary and Postnational Imaginary.” The Changing Role of the Humanities in the Academy and Society: HIstorical and Transnational Perspectives. Centre for British Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin. 15-17 September 2011.
“Joan Anim-Addo's Imoinda and the Caribbean Politics of Re-Vision.| 14th Annual Islands-in-Between Conference: Language, Literature & Culture of the Eastern Caribbean Spice Basket, Beaulieu, St. George’s, Grenada 3-5 November 2011.
“Teaching Imoinda as a text of transatlantic modernity.” Translating Cultures Workshop. November 2011. St. George’s University, Grenada.
Plenary Chair (Invited). Gendered Ways of Knowing? Gender, Natural Sciences and Humanities. Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy. December 1-4, 2010.
“Othering Europe, Living in Europe Otherwise. The Promise of a Name as One and the Event of an Intercultural Present.” Europe in its Own Eyes, Europe in the Eyes of the Other. University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. October 2010.
“Martin Heidegger’s ‘Worldhood of the World’ and Toni Morrison’s ‘Inoperative Community’:The World at its Limits.” Northeast Modern Language Association. February 2009.
“PostEurope, Intercultural Democracy, and the Unimagined Gift of Hospitality.” Special Panel: Balkan Economies: Abject Aesthetics and a Politics of the Act. Brunel University, UK. The International Association of Philosophy and Literature: Double Edges. June 2009.
“Narratives of Expropriation and Community: Amitav Ghosh’s A Sea of Poppies.” Translating Slavery: Discourses of Imperialism in the Past and the Present. An International and Interdisciplinary Symposium. Faculty of English Studies, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. December 2008.
“The Specter of Imoinda: Un-writing, Re-righting, Claiming the Right to a Community-yet-to-come.” The European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. Venice 2008.
“Humanism and the Quest of Community.” Princeton University, ACLA, The Human and its Others, March 2006. Seminar leader of Humanism and the Global Hybrid.
“Narrating Haunting, Writing Community: Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation and the Work of Maryse Condé.” Fifth International Conference of Caribbean Women’s Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. Writing, Diaspora and the Legacy of Slavery. April 2007.
“Mothering as Resistance” Mothers Haunting Empires.” University of Athens, (Re)Constructing Pain and Joy in Language, Literature, and Culture. October 20-23, 2005.
“Cities against Globality? The politics of ‘open communities’ in the era of globalization”, University of Cyprus, The Choras of Theory, September 23-25 2005.
“Whose Humanism? The Local and the Global.” Fulbright Scholars’ International Interdisciplinary Conference, Athens, October 8-10 2004.
“From Plato’s Sin-oikia to the Global Polis: The Ontological Bearings and Political Praxis of Community in a Global Era”, American Comparative Literature Association, April 15-18 2004.
“The Specters of the Mediterranean Polis.” Washington University, Saint Louis. Department of Romance Languages and Comparative Literature. April 2004.
“Towards an Active Cosmopolitanism.” MESEA, University of Thessaloniki. May 2003.
“Rewriting the History of the Fragment, Revisiting the History of Modern Greek History.” Modern Language Association. December 27-30, 2002.
“William V. Spanos’ Spectral Politics and American Culture.” University of Dartmouth, The Work of William V.Spanos and the role of American Studies after September 11th. November 21-23, 2002.
“Writing the Self, writing the Other: European and American Encounters in Women’s Autobiographical Writings.” University of Padua, MESEA Conference, June 2002.
“The Ideological Global Apparatuses”, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, HASE Conference, The Periphery Viewing the World, May 2002.
“Desiring the Dreamland, Rewriting the Homeland”, American Studies Seminar, American Embassy & American College of Greece, March 2002.
“The Specters of the Greek polis and the questions of “filia” in the global metropolis”, Fulbright Conference, Delphic Friendship, December 2000.
“Re-thinking the «post» at a Global Moment”, University of Athens, Culture Agonistes: Texts Against Texts, May 2000.
“Beloved: Mothering a Specter”, Aristotelion University, The Other Within, May 1998.
“Re-reading the Female Gaze or Looking at the “What-is-not” in Jane Campion and Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady”, West Virginia University, Twenty-second Annual Colloquium on Literature and Film, October 1997.
“The Role of Performance in Plato’s Cratylus”, Brown University, Department of Classics: Viva Voce/ A Conference on Reading the Classics, February 1997.
“Encounters with Deleuze and Guattari’s Nomadology and the Female Nomadic Subject”, MLA Conference, Washington DC: Panel on Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, December 1996.
ORGANISATION OF SEMINARS & CONFERENCE PANELS:
Representations of the Dispossessed in the Twenty-First Century: Hospitality, Human Rights and the Subterfuges of Neoliberal Thinking. Department of English, School of Philosophy, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. Athens 10 March, 2020.
The Legacies of Poststructuralism. With Dr. Stamatina Dimakopoulou, An international symposium of Synthesis, http://synthesis.enl.uoa.gr/ National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. Athens History Museum, Plaka, Athens, June 2015.
The War on the Human: The Human as Right, the Human as Limit and the Task of the Humanities. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 27-29 November 2014. (http://www.twh.gr)
Democracy, The Other of: An International Symposium of Synthesis, http://synthesis.enl.uoa.gr/ National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. Organizer: Mina Karavanta. Athens History Museum, Plaka, Athens, September 2013.
ReSisters in Travelling Concepts: Engendering Keywords. Organizer and co-ordinator of the seminar of Interculturality, ATHENA III Research Group. 8th European Feminist Research Conference. 8th European Feminist Research Conference, 17-20 May 2012. Budapest, Hungary.
Translating Slavery: Discourses of Imperialism in the Past and the Present. With C. Dokou & E. Mitsi. Title of Presentation: “Narratives of Expropriation and Community: Amitav Ghosh’s A Sea of Poppies” National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Main Building. Athens, 2008.
Nomadism, Community, Inhabitancy and the ‘Emergency State. With Professor Robert P. Marzec (Purdue University). American Comparative Literature Association, Long Beach, CA. April 2008.
Practicing Gender Studies in Europe: The Case of ATHENA through ‘Travelling Concepts. Gender Studies Program, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. December 2007. Program Coordinators: Professors Stella Vosniadou & Bessie Dendrinos.
Humanism and the Global Hybrid. With Professor Nina Morgan (Kennesaw State University). American Comparative Literature Association. The Human and its Others. Princeton University, 2006.
The Role of the Humanities in the Age of Globalization. With Professors A.Velissariou & A. Despotopoulou. Faculty of English Studies, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, May 2004.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES (Selected):
Co-ordinator, “Interculturality.” ATHENA (European Thematic Network, ERASMUS AWARD 2010) Subgroup of Traveling Concepts. 2008-2009.
Participant in ATHENA NETWORK, (EU): Activity 2B1, “Teaching Traveling Concepts,” 2004-8.
Member of the Committee of the Interdepartmental Postgraduate Translation Studies Program, School of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Member of the Committee of the Postgraduate Program of the Faculty of English, School of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Member of the founding editorial collective of the interdisciplinary journal, crossings (a Counter-Disciplinary Journal of Philosophical, Cultural, and Literary Studies), Binghamton University, 1995-2000.
LANGUAGES
Greek: Mother Tongue
English: MA & PhD SUNY at Binghamton
Diploma of English Studies (University of Cambridge)
Proficiency of Cambridge (C2)
French: Sorbonne II (C2)
Spanish: Department of Comparative Literature, SUNY at Binghamton
German: B2
(Last updated: November 19, 2021)