Antonis Balasopoulos
Assistant Professor
PROFILE
Undergraduate studies at Aristotle University, Thessaloniki (B.A English Language and Literature 1991). Graduate Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (M.A English 1994; Ph.D English, Minor in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, 1998). He has taught at the University of Minnesota (1994-1997), the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2001), and since 2001, the University of Cyprus. He has held a Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University (2004) and has been appointed Institute Faculty at the Dartmouth Institute of American Studies, Dartmouth College (June 2007). During Fall 2007, he will be teaching at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Utopian fiction and nonfiction, 16th-19th centuries; Literature and Culture of US Empire, 1800-1900; literature, geography and the production of space; nationalism, colonialism and postcoloniality; critical theory, especially Marxism, genre theory, and theories of the political; visual culture, especially cinema.
PUBLICATIONS
Edited Volumes
Antonis Balasopoulos and Stephanos Stephanides, eds. Special Issue on Comparative Literature and Global Studies: Histories and Trajectories. Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 13 (2005). 230 pages.
Antonis Balasopoulos, Gesa Mackenthun, Dora Tsimpouki, eds. Conformism, Non-Conformism and Anti-Conformism in the Culture of the United States. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter (forthcoming Winter 2008).
Journal Essays
“The Demon of (Racial) History: Reading Candyman.” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 5 (1999): 25-47.
“‘The Latter Part of [the] Commonwealth Forgets the Beginning': Empire and Utopian Economics in Early Modern New World Discourse.” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 9 (2001): 31-53. Online access:
http://genesis.ee.auth.gr/dimakis//////////////////Gramma/9/02.html
“The Spatial Politics of Partition Literature.” The European English Messenger 11.2 (2002): 53-56.
“Progress, Regression, Repetition: Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes and the Ambivalences of Imperial Modernity.” Imaginaires 9 (2003): 199-213.
“Unworldly Worldliness: America and the Trajectories of Utopian Expansionism.” Utopian Studies 15.2 (Spring 2004): 3-35. Online access:
http://direct.bl.uk/bld/OrderDetails.do?did=3&uin=162618180
(with Stephanos Stephanides). “The Work of the Wor(l)d: Comparative Literature and Global Studies.” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 13 (2005): 7-19.
“‘Suffer a Sea Change’: Spatial Crisis, Maritime Modernity, and the Politics of Utopia.” Cultural Critique 63(Spring 2006): 122-156. Online access:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cultural_critique/v063/63.1balasopoulos.pdf
“‘Utopiae Insulae Figura’: Utopian Insularity and the Politics of Form” Transtext(e)s-Transcultures: Journal of Global Cultural Studies, 3. (Forthcoming 2007).
Essays and Chapters in Books
“Decoding Darkness: Playing in the Dark.” Toni Morrison, eds. Yiorgos Kalogeras and Domna Pastourmantzi. Thessaloniki: Hellenic Association of American Studies, 1995. 163-192 (in Greek).
Critical Introductions to Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Beyond the Floating Islands, eds. Stephanos Stephanides and Susan Bassnett. Bologna: University of Bologna/COTEPRA, 2002. 34-35, 58-60.
“The Fractured Image: Plato, the Greeks, and the Figure of the Ideal City.” Exploring the Utopian Impulse: Essays on the Terrain of Utopian Thought and Practice, eds. Tom Moylan and Michael Griffin. New York et al.: Peter Lang (forthcoming in 2007).
“The Insular Imaginary and the Geopoetics of Modernity.” The Uncertain Modernity of Cypriot Experience: From Colonialism to Postmodernism, ed. Marios Constantinou. Athens: Polytropon (forthcoming in 2007; in Greek).
“Introduction.” Conformism, Non-Conformism and Anti-Conformism in the Culture of the United States. Ed. Antonis Balasopoulos, Gesa Mackenthun, and Dora Tsimpouki. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter (forthcoming in 2008).
Essays in Selected Conference Proceedings
“Writing Nation Other-Wise: Captivity and the Uses of Alterity in Royall Tyler's The Algerine Captive.” The Other Within. Vol I: Literature and Culture, ed.Ruth Parkin-Gounelas. Thessaloniki: Athanasios Altintzis, 2001. 35-48.
Book Reviews and Review Essays
“The Limits of Eloquence: Debating the Post-colonial.” Review of Homi K. Bhabha's “Postcolonial Criticism.” Available online at the University of Minnesota's New Voices from Within: Graduate Student Essays on the Profession of English Studies, 1996. Online access: http://english.cla.umn.edu/faculty/bales/newvoice.html
Review of Theodora Tsimpouki and Angeliki Spiropoulou (eds.). Culture Agonistes: Debating Culture, Rereading Texts (Peter Lang, 2002). European Journal of American Culture 23.1 (2004): 66-67.
Review of Sterling F. Delano, Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia (Harvard University Press, 2004). European Association for American Studies Book Reviews Online access: http://www.eaas.info/reviews/delano.htm
Review of Paola Gemme, Domesticating Foreign Struggles: The Italian Risorgimento and Antebellum American Identity (Georgia University Press, 2005). European Association for American Studies Book Reviews
Online access: http://www.eaas.info/reviews/gemme.htm
Review of Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Duke University Press, 2004). Journal of American Studies 40.2 (2006): 425-426. Online access: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=458208
Review of Andrew Loman, ‘Somewhat on the Community-System’: Fourierism in the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Routledge, 2005). Utopian Studies 17.3 (2006): 547-551. Online access: http://direct.bl.uk/bld/OrderDetails.do?did=1&uin=205252379
Essays Under Review
“Nesologies: On the Geopoetics of Post-colonial Experience.” Under review in Postcolonial Studies.
“Ghosts of the Future: Jameson, Derrida, and the Afterlife of Utopia.” Under review in New Left Review.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Books and Edited Volumes
(with Apostolos Lampropoulos, eds.). States of Theory: History and Geography of Critical Narratives. Athens: Metaichmio (forthcoming 2008; in Greek).
Figures of Utopia: Culture, Politics, Philosophy. Projected completion: Spring 2009.
Groundless Dominions: Utopia, Science Fiction and the Cultural Politics of US Expansionism in the 19th Century.
Chapters in Books
“‘Utopian and Cynical Elements’: Chaplin, Cinema and Weimar Marxism.” Essay commissioned for Futurescapes: Space in Utopian and Science Fiction, ed. Ralph Pordzik, Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, forthcoming 2008.
Journal Essays
“Picturing Labor: Cinema, Mechanisation, and Working-class Allegory in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands.”
“Political Animals: Critical Remarks on the Homo Sacer Project.”
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
President, Cyprus Society for the Study of English
Member, Utopian Studies Society
Member, Society for Utopian Studies
Member, Modern Language Association
Member, American Studies Association
Member, International Association of Philosophy and Literature
Member, Hellenic Association of American Studies
MEMBERSHIP IN EDITORIAL BOARDS AND SERVICE AS INDEPENDENT REFEREE
Member of the Editorial Board, Mesogeios, University of Cyprus Press, 2004-
Independent referee, Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press)
ORGANIZATIONAL INITIATIVES
Co-organizer, “Cultures of Memory/Memories of Culture,” CYSSE/ACUME conference Nicosia, 20-22 February 2004.
Co-organizer, “Comparative Cultural Studies and Globalization” Symposium, University of Cyprus, 19-20 November 2004.
Co-organizer, “States of Theory: History and Geography of Critical Narratives,” Nicosia, 23-25 September 2005.
Head Organizer, European Association for American Studies Conference, University of Cyprus, 7-10 April 2006.
Co-organizer of Invited Symposium “From Polis to the Camp: Polemical Modalities and Spatial Intensities of the Political,” International Association for Philosophy and Literature Conference, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, 5-9 June 2007.
COURSES TAUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS
Graduate Seminars
Nation and Narrative
Space and Cultural Production
Undergraduate Courses
Studies in Fiction I (sophomore level)
Studies in Fiction II (sophomore level)
The English Novel I (sophomore level)
The English Novel II (sophomore level)
Seminar in American Studies I: Subjectivity and Subjection: (Un)Freedom and the Making of American Culture 1776-1865 (junior/senior seminar)
Seminar in American Studies II: Visions of Empire in American Literature and Culture 1880-1914 (junior/senior seminar)
English Literature and Culture at the Fin-de-Siècle (junior/senior seminar)
Studies in Victorian Fiction (junior/senior seminar)