Dr Vassiliki Kolocotroni
- Senior Lecturer in English Literature (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 have published widely on modernism, Hellenism, theory and on international and transcultural encounters (incl. journal essays and book chapters on Woolf, Joyce, Conrad, H.D., Freud, Rhys, Benjamin, Brecht, Cavafy, Derrida and Heidegger), as well as on the writing on Muriel Spark. In recent years, I have edited a Special Issue on New Queer Greece, and have studied the work of the Greek-American surrealist poet, activist and art historian Nicolas Calas. I co-edited and translated Calas’s French poetry and his correspondence with William Carlos Williams, and as a separate volume the previously unpublished 'oral history' interview with Calas for the Archives of American Art. 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, an essay on Scottish Philhellenism, and an essay on Isadora Duncan and modernism.
I am the Internationalisation Officer for the School of Critical Studies, 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 currently chair the University's Gifford Lectures Committee.
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
Current 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). I am currently supervising a range of research projects, including theses on:
- Sapphic Modernisms (Molly Farrell)
- Mina Loy (Emma Ward)
- Muriel Spark (Kaiyue He)
- Feminism and the 21st-century Memoir (Lauren Cooper)
- Byronic cliché in late nineteenth-century travelogues to Greece (Georgia Toumara)
Past supervision
Completed projects include 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)
- Cooper, Lauren
Autotheory from Memoir to Manifestos and Zines - Farrell, Molly
Coded Desires: Queer expression in womxn-authored modernisms, 1895-1928 - He, Kaiyue
Muriel Spark's Houses of Fiction and Faith - 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
Selected international presentations
- 2019: International Cavafy Summer School (Onassis Foundation)
- 2018: Société d'études modernistes Seminar (University of Paris)
- 2017: HASE: Beyond the Ruin (University of Athens)
- 2017: MSA (Modernist Studies Association) 19 Annual Conference 19 (Amsterdam)
- 2017: School of English Seminar (University of Luxembourg)
- 2014: Inaugural conference of French Modernist Studies Association (University of Paris)
- 2014: Theory Seminar (University of Cambridge)
Additional information
I am currently the School of Critical Studies Internationalisation Officer. I was Head of English Literature between 2014-17 and PGR Convener from 2018-22. I am a founding member 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 am Co-Director of Glasgow University's Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements and Chair of the Glasgow Gifford Lectures Committee.