Professor Vassiliki Kolocotroni
- Professor of Modernist Studies (English Literature)
telephone:
01413305697
email:
Vassiliki.Kolocotroni@glasgow.ac.uk
R303 Level 3, English Literature, 5 University Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QH
Research interests
My main research interests lie in the areas of international modernism and the avant-garde, classical reception, theory, visual art approaches, travel, and film
I am the co-editor of Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents, The Edinburgh Dictionary of Modernism (both published by Edinburgh UP), and General Editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. I have published widely on modernism, Hellenism, theory and on international and transcultural encounters (incl. most recently on Proust, Sebald, Woolf, Joyce, Conrad, H.D., Freud, Rhys, Benjamin, Brecht, Cavafy, Derrida, Heidegger and Spark). In recent years, I have edited Special Issues on New Queer Greece, the bicentenary of the 1821 Greek Revolution (for the Journal of Greek Media and Culture), and Muriel Spark (for Textual Practice), as well as the poetry and correspondence of the Greek-American Surrealist poet and art historian Nicolas Calas. I have also written on film and on the theoretical and literary work of Julia Kristeva. I am currently at work on a number of projects, including a monograph on modernism and Hellenism, two essays on the Scottish Philhellenes Edward Masson and Isabella Fyvie Mayo, and an essay collection on Isadora Duncan and modernism.
Grants
As Head of the Graduate School of Arts and Humanities (2005-10) and Associate Dean for Postgraduates (2009-10), I was instrumental in generating AHRC funding for graduate research training initiatives, such as international conferences, one-day symposia, seminar series and exhibitions on interdisciplinary topics such as:
- Perceptual Experience (2005)
- Gender (2006)
- Oral History (2007)
- Modern Environments (2007)
- Magic, Art and Meditation (2007)
- Mourning, Memory and Landscape (2008)
- Art, Religion, Identity (2009)
- Caribbean Enlightenment (2010).
Supervision
I am interested in supervising doctoral work in any area of international modernism and the avant-garde, mid-century experimental writing, cultural and critical theory, politics and aesthetics, and welcome particularly projects with a focus on classical reception, surrealism, intermedial approaches (visual art, film).
Past supervision
I have supervised to successful completion and award over 30 postgraduate research projects, including theses on:
- T. S. Eliot's philosophical poetics (Fabio Vericat)
- Cult fiction (Joe McAvoy)
- The British literary manifesto (Julian Hanna)
- Late 19th-century British women travellers in Greece (Churnjeet Mahn)
- Political performance art in 1970s California (Sarah Lowndes)
- Women writers of the Beat generation (Katie Stewart)
- Creolization in Caribbean writing (Lorna Burns)
- The cyborg in fiction and art (Warren Steele)
- Encounters between modern Greek and English poetry (Konstantina Georganta)
- Nicolas Calas's curatorial work (for the London Consortium - Irini Marinaki)
- Dante/Joyce/Derrida (Maria-Daniella Dick)
- The representation of refugees in British media (Pauline Donald)
- Woolf and postmodernism (Derek Ryan)
- The role of public monuments in discourses of nationalism and reconciliation (Chrystalleni Loizidou, for the London Consortium)
- David Foster Wallace (Mark West)
- Hope Mirrlees and Jane Ellen Harrison (Nina Enemark)
- Alain Badiou's writings on poetry (Tom Betteridge)
- The modern Irish novel of formation (Shahriyar Mansouri)
- Borges's translations of Kafka and Woolf (Rebecca DeWald)
- American post-war fiction and the traumatised body (Argyro Filippaki)
- Virginia Woolf and the Short Story (Amy Bromley)
- Anna Kavan, Ann Quin and Alexander Trocchi (Hannah Van Hove)
- Two creative writing doctorates on the historical novel (Ioulia Kolovou)
- The long poem 'Imperative Commands' (Nicky Melville)
- Models in the writing of W.G. Sebald (Matthew Evans)
- Oscar Wilde's Afterlives (Ana Markovic)
- The Sonic Text (Pernille Ravn)
- Benjamin Fondane's Irresigned Poetics (Andrew Rubens)
- The aesthetics and ethics of war and conflict in contemporary art (Maria Rossi)
- Feminism and Auto-theory (Dzenana Vucic)
- Muriel Spark and the House of Fiction (Kaiyue He)
Current supervision:
- Carr, Felix
The Aesthetics and Politics of Ressentiment: A Twentieth-Century Genealogy - Cooper, Lauren
Autotheory from Memoir to Manifestos and Zines - Douge, Amanda
Rosa Luxemburg and I - Toumara, Georgia
Travelling in the Byronic Aura: Cliché and Imaginary Geographies in Late Romantic and Victorian Travelogues to Greece and Italy
Teaching
I am currently convening topic courses in Radical Theory and Modernism and the Politics of Gender (Senior Honours).
I have convened the MLitt in Modernities, the general courses in Literary Theory and Modern Literature 1890-1945 (Junior Honours).
Professional activities & recognition
Grant committees & research advisory boards
- 2014: Irish Research Council, Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship
- 2020: Irish Research Council - Outer Board Assessment Panel, Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship
Editorial boards
- 2012: Journal of Greek Media and Culture
- 2011: Synthesis
Professional & learned societies
- 2024: Fellow, The English Association
Selected international presentations
- 2023: Continental Modernisms Workshop (Berlin (funded by University of Marburg))
- 2022: Invited Speaker as BSA Ambassador: Scotland Seminar (British School at Athens)
- 2021: Keynote, Literary Hotels Symposium (University of Athens)
- 2021: Invited talk, 12th A. G. Leventis Conference in Hellenic Studies Thursday 18 November–Saturday 20 November 2021 The Greek Revolution of 1821 Contexts, Scottish Connections, the Classical Tradition (University of Edinburgh)
- 2019: Invited speaker International Cavafy Summer School (Onassis Foundation)
- 2018: Invited speaker Société d'études modernistes Research Seminar (University of Paris)
- 2017: Hellenic Association for the Study of English: Beyond the Ruin Conference (University of Athens)
- 2017: MSA (Modernist Studies Association) 19 Annual Conference 19 (Amsterdam)
- 2017: School of English Seminar (University of Luxembourg)
- 2016: Invited Speaker Roundtable Historical Modernisms Symposium | Institute of English Studies (University of London)
- 2014: Inaugural conference of French Modernist Studies Association (University of Paris)
- 2014: Theory Seminar (University of Cambridge)
- 2013: Keynote, Greece and Britain in Women's Literary Imagination (1914-2012) (University of Cambridge)
Supplementary
- General Editor, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism Co-Principal Editor, Journal of Greek Media and Culture (since Jan 2023) Member of Panel of Judges Runciman Book Prize, Anglo-Hellenic League
Additional information
I am the General Editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, and co-Principal Editor of the Journal of Greek Media and Culture. I am one of the founders of the Scottish Network of Modernist Studies, and a member of the British Association of Modernist Studies and the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies. I have been involved with the Scottish Universities' International Summer School for many years as a tutor and director, and latterly as Associate Dean. I co-direct Glasgow University's Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements and chair the Glasgow Gifford Lectures Committee.
I am currently the Internationalisation Officer for the School of Critical Studies, Chair of the University's Gifford Lectures Committee, co-director of the Research Network for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements and Associate Dean of the Scottish Universities' International Summer School. I have served as Head of the Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities (2005-10), Associate Dean for Postgraduates in the Faculty of Arts (2009-10), Head of English Literature (2014-17), Postgraduate Research Convener in English Literature (2018-23), and as an elected member of Senate.