Join us for a thought-provoking online book launch on Saturday, December 2nd 2023, at 10:00 a.m. EST, as we unveil Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies, in Western Literature, Philosophy, and Art. Towards Theory and Practice, edited by Peggy Karpouzou and Nikoleta Zampaki (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023).
The book launch event will be conducted virtually on Zoom. To attend this enlightening session, please register in advance using the following link: Registration Link. Secure your virtual seat now!
Outline
Through the burgeoning fields of Posthumanities and Environmental Humanities, this edition examines the changing conception of human subjectivity, agency, and citizenship as shaped by the dynamic interplays between nature, technology, science, and culture. The proposed ‘symbiotic turn’, (the awareness of the multitude of interactions and mutual interdependencies among humans, non-humans and their environment) aspires to explore the complex recompositions of the “human” in the 21st century. By organizing and promoting interdisciplinary dialogue at multiple levels, both in theory and practice, Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies is suggested as a new narrative about the biosphere and technosphere, which is embodied literarily, philosophically, and artistically.
Speakers’ List and Short Bios
Editors
Peggy Karpouzou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Dr. Peggy Karpouzou is Associate Professor of Theory of Literature at the Faculty of Philology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is the author and editor of several works, including La Poétique de l’ironie dans la nouvelle du XIXe siècle (2003) and A. Tzouma, P. Karavia and P. Karpouzou, Hellenic and translated in Greek Bibliography of Literary Theory (1940-2007) (2019), P.Karpouzou-N. Zampaki (eds.), Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies in Western Literature, Philosophy and Art: Towards Theory and Practice, Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023. Her research interests focus on Literary Theories and Cultural Criticism (Posthumanism, Ecocriticism, Spatial Studies, Poststructuralism, Identity Politics, Interrelations of Literature and Science, Science Fiction, Travel writing) in Greek, French, and Anglophone Literature of the 19th-21st centuries. She is Editor in Chief at the Journal of Ecohumanism and Series Editor of the book series “Posthumanities and Citizenship Futures” at Rowman & Littlefield, “Environmental Humanities” by TPLondon and “Brill Research Perspectives in Critical Theory”.
Nikoleta Zampaki, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki is Post-doc Researcher at the Faculty of Philology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece. She was Instructor at the Utah University in the U.S.A. Her disciplines are Environmental Humanities, Posthumanities, Digital Humanities, and Comparative Literature. She is editor and reviewer at many journals overseas, Associate and Managing Editor at the Journal of Ecohumanism, and current member of Education Team of NASA, V.I.N.E.-Glenn Research Center. She has also participated in many conferences and she is a multilingual student by working on English, French, Romanian, Russian, Chinese, Hungarian, Maori, and Turkish. She is also co-editor with Professor Peggy Karpouzou of the book series “Posthumanities and Citizenship Futures” at Rowman & Littlefield, and “Environmental Humanities” at TPLondon.
Volume’s Authors
Dimitris Angelatos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Dimitris Angelatos is Professor of Modern Greek Literature and Theory of Literature in the Department of Modern Greek Studies (Faculty of Philology) since 2009. His undergraduate studies were done at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and his postgraduate studies were done at the University of Sorbonne (Sorbonne Nouvelle/ PARIS III and Paris- Sorbonne/ PARIS IV); PhD: University of Paris- Sorbonne/ PARIS IV (1987). He has taught Modern Greek Literature, Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature at the University of Crete (1989– 1994) and the University of Cyprus (1994– 2009). He has been a supervisor of many PhD. and M.A. thesis and scientific director of research programs in the aforementioned universities. His research interests are Theory of Literary Genres and Modes, Comparative Poetics and Interartistic Studies (Literature, Painting and Sculpture), Literary Criticism and Aesthetics (19th– 20th ce.), Modern Greek and European Literature (19th– 20th ce.).
Mieke Bal, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Mieke Bal is author of 45 books, cultural theorist, critic, video artist and curator. She writes in an interdisciplinary perspective on cultural analysis, literature and art, focusing on gender, migratory culture, the critique of capitalism, and political art. In 2002 she began to also make films as a different (more in- depth and more contemporary) mode of cultural analysis. Since then, writing, filmmaking and curating go together. In her 2022 book Image-Thinking she develops her ideas about how to integrate academic and artistic thinking. As a filmmaker, she made a number of experimental documentaries, mostly about migratory situations, and “theoretical fictions”, films and installations in which fiction helped develop difficult ideas. Madame B (2014) was exhibited in the Munch Museum in Oslo in combination with works by Edvard Munch. Reasonable Doubt, on René Descartes and Queen Kristina of Sweden, (2016) also travelled. Then she made a 16- channel video- installation Don Quijote: Sad Countenances (2019) and a short essay film It’s About Time! Reflections on Urgency (2020). Her personal website is: www.mieke bal.org.
Fred Evans, Duquesne University, U.S.A.
Fred Evans is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and former Coordinator for the Center of Interpretive and Qualitative Research at Duquesne University. He is the author of Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy: An Essay in Political Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), The Multivoiced Body: Society and Communication in the Age of Diversity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009; 2011), Psychology and Nihilism: A Genealogical Critique of the Computational Model of Mind (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), and co- editor (with Leonard Lawlor) of Chiasms: Merleau- Ponty’s Notion of Flesh (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000). Evans has published numerous articles and book chapters on continental thinkers in relation to issues concerning psychology, politics, public art, and technology. He is currently working on a book addressing cosmopolitanism or the political ethics of world togetherness. He also worked for five years at the Lao National Orthopedic Center and other positions in Laos, under the auspices of International Voluntary Services, and taught philosophy for a year at La Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia.
Cassandra Falke, UiT – The Arctic University, Norway
Cassandra Falke is a Professor of English Literature at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. She is the author of Literature by the Working Classes: English Autobiography, 1820–1848 (2013) and The Phenomenology of Love and Reading (2016, paperback 2018) and the editor or co-editor of four collections: Intersections in Christianity and Critical Theory (2010), Phenomenology of the Broken Body (2019, paperback 2020), Wild Romanticism (2021), Interpreting Violence: Narrative, Ethics and Hermeneutics (2023). In articles and book chapters, she has written about romanticism, education, the application of phenomenology to literary texts and most recently the portrayal of political violence in contemporary novels. She leads the Interdisciplinary Phenomenology research group at UiT and coordinates the English Literature programs. She is also President of the American Studies Association of Norway.
David Fancy, Brock University, U.S.A.
David Fancy is Professor and Chair in the Department of Dramatic Arts, Brock University. He brings his philosophical interests in immanentist thought to performance studies, science and technology studies, and critical disability studies. Recent publications include Fancy, David, and Hans Skott- Myhre, Eds. Immanence, Politics and the Aesthetic: Thinking Revolt in the 21st Century. McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2019; Fancy, David, and Lillian Manzour Eds. Teatro de Tres Americas: Antología Norte. Ediciones Sin Paredes, 2021; and Fancy, David, and Conrad Alexandrowicz (eds). Theatre Pedagogy in an Era of Climate Crisis. Routledge, 2021. Fancy has an extensive practice as a playwright and director of theatre, opera, and circus; he is the editor of a website on the subject of actor training and diversities. Fancy’s current projects revolve around notions of resonance and how these intersect with technocapital and social control, as well as notions of geoartistry, or the ability of the earth’s many other- than- human entities to generate and also receive aesthetic experience.
Aleksandra Łukaszewicz, Akademia Sztuki w Szczecinie, Poland
Aleksandra Łukaszewicz is Professor in Humanities in the field of Culture Studies, PhD in Philosophy, specialist in philosophical aesthetics and theory of culture and art, presenting an interdisciplinary approach, combining elements of aesthetical and social reflection. Vice- chairman of the Polish Society of Aesthetics. The recipient of various prizes and grants; these include a scholarship from the Kościuszko Foundation for research on art, culture, and aesthetics in the work of Joseph Margolis, and a grant to support the preparation of her book project on the theory of cyborg persons explained in terms of the metaphysics of culture: Are Cyborgs Persons? An Account on Futurist Ethics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. The coordinator of two international research consortium: TICASS and TPAEE realizing projects funded by the European Commission within the programme MSCA- RISE H2020, dedicated to visual communication and visual literacy, and to art and art education in intercultural perspective. Current investigation in: posthumanism, transhumanism, art and science, transcultural aesthetics.
Glen A. Mazis, Penn State Harrisburg, U.S.A.
Glen A. Mazis is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Humanities Emeritus at Penn State Harrisburg, having retired in 2020. He also taught at University of Illinois at Champaign- Urbana, Louisiana State University, Northern Kentucky University, St. Lawrence University, Wesleyan University, Soka University, and SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of Emotion and Embodiment: Fragile Ontology (Peter Lang, 1993), The Trickster, Magician and Grieving Man: Returning Men to Earth (Inner Traditions, 1994) and Earthbodies: Rediscovering Our Planetary Senses (SUNY, 2002), Humans, Animals and Machines: Blurring Boundaries (SUNY, 2008) and Merleau- Ponty and the Face of the World: Silence, Ethics, Imagination and Poetic Ontology. He has published more than two dozen essays on aspects of Merleau- Ponty’s philosophy in journals and collections, as well as numerous essays on emotion, imagination, art, film, dreams, embodiment, animality, archetypal psychology, gender issues, ethics, ecology, technology, etc. His most recent book is Merleau- Ponty and the Face of the World: Silence, Ethics, Imagination and Poetic Ontology (SUNY, 2016). He is also a poet who gives readings, performances, and has published more than 80 poems in leading literary reviews and two collections, The River Bends in Time (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and The Body Is a Dancing Star (Orchard Street Press, 2020).
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