Books by Peggy Karpouzou
Ο "Περίπλους της Θεωρίας της Λογοτεχνίας" επιχειρεί μια χαρτογράφηση της θέσης και της δυναμικής ... more Ο "Περίπλους της Θεωρίας της Λογοτεχνίας" επιχειρεί μια χαρτογράφηση της θέσης και της δυναμικής της Θεωρίας της Λογοτεχνίας στον ελληνικό ακαδημαϊκό χώρο στις αρχές του 21ου αιώνα. Η Θεωρία της Λογοτεχνίας εξετάζει συστηματικά τη φύση του λογοτεχνικού κειμένου και τις μεθόδους ανάλυσής του ενώ διερευνά επίσης τους τρόπους με τους οποίους παράγεται το νόημα και συγκροτούνται οι ανθρώπινες ταυτότητες μέσω των κειμένων. Συνιστά ένα διεπιστημονικό και πολυδιάστατο πεδίο έρευνας των ανθρωπιστικών επιστημών με προεκτάσεις και εφαρμογές σε διαφορετικούς χώρους, όπως η εκπαίδευση, η επικοινωνία, οι παραστατικές τέχνες.
Ο ανά χείρας τόμος επιδιώκει να εισαγάγει τον αναγνώστη στις γόνιμες περιπλανήσεις της Θεωρίας, εντός και εκτός των ορίων της λογοτεχνίας. Οι πενήντα μελέτες του τιμητικού αυτού τόμου για την Άννα Τζούμα, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια Θεωρίας της Λογοτεχνίας του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, μέσα από ένα ευρύ φάσμα κριτικών εννοιών και προσεγγίσεων αναδεικνύουν ειδικές και νέες πτυχές της ποιητικής, της ερμηνείας και της πρόσληψης των λογοτεχνικών κειμένων. Παράλληλα, φιλοδοξούν να προαγάγουν τον διεπιστημονικό διάλογο με τη φιλοσοφία, την πολιτισμική θεωρία, τη γλωσσολογία, τη θεατρολογία, την αρχιτεκτονική, τη θεωρία του χορού και τη νομική επιστήμη.
Through the burgeoning fields of Posthumanities and Environmental Humanities, this edition examin... more 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.
Papers by Peggy Karpouzou
Biomimetics, 2025
Ecosystem services are crucial for animals, plants, the planet, and human well-being. Decreasing ... more Ecosystem services are crucial for animals, plants, the planet, and human well-being. Decreasing biodiversity and environmental destruction of ecosystems will have severe consequences. Designing technologies that could support, enhance, or even replace ecosystem services is a complex task that the Manufactured Ecosystems Project team considers to be only achievable with transdisciplinarity, as it unlocks new directions for designing research and development systems. One of these directions in the project is bio-inspiration, learning from natural systems as the foundation for manufacturing ecosystem services. Using soil formation as a case study, text-mining of existing scientific literature reveals a critical gap: fewer than 1% of studies in biomimetics address soil formation technological replacement, despite the rapid global decline in natural soil formation processes. The team sketches scenarios of ecosystem collapse, identifying how bio-inspired solutions for equitable and sustainable innovation can contribute to climate adaptation. The short communication opens the discussion for collaboration and aims to initiate future research.
Zygote Quarterly, 2024
Shoshanah Jacobs, Elizabeth Porter, Dave Dowhaniuk, Mark Lipton, Dawn Bazely, M. Alex Smith, Niko... more Shoshanah Jacobs, Elizabeth Porter, Dave Dowhaniuk, Mark Lipton, Dawn Bazely, M. Alex Smith, Nikoleta Zampaki, Peggy Karpouzou, Marjan Eggermont, Michael Helms, Mindi Summers, Andria Jones, Christina Smylitopoulos, Heather Clitheroe, Adam Davies, Marsha Hinds Myrie, Daniel Gillis, Claudia Rivera, Karina Benessaiah and Kristina Wanieck. "Can Manufactured Ecosystems fully replace ecosystem services?" Zygote Quarterly 35.1 (2024): 40-53.
Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, 2024
They brought together scholars from Canada, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United S... more They brought together scholars from Canada, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United States, creating a wide spectrum of critical thought while demonstrating some of the tools of Digital Humanities. In addition to the special block, we're also very pleased with the selection of essays below that includes one on the now mostly neglected science-fiction writer, Clifford D. Simak, as a very early environmentalist. In "Oddly Radical: Environmental Virtue Ethics in Simak's Way Station," Jeffrey M. Baus argues that at the time of the essay "Simak's advocacy for ecological values and pastoral themes was a deviation from the perceived trajectory of technological 'progress' within the genre, and deeper analysis reveals that his seemingly counterrevolutionary approach, moving beyond the reductive 'conservative' label, presaged the core tenets of twenty-firstcentury environmental ethics and ecofeminism." In "Poisoned Grounds: Toxic Discourse in Barbara Kingsolver's Fiction and Nonfiction," Abhra Paul and Vidya Sarveswaran draw on Lawrence Buell's useful phrase, "toxic discourse" to discuss Kingsolver's ecological criticism written over about fifteen years. Their conclusion will come as no surprise that "Kingsolver's fiction and nonfiction present how human-induced chemical toxicity destroys the planetary ecosystem" while their insightful analysis invites readers to reread Kingsolver's books. Changing the subject from ecocritism to poetic form, Enikő Bollobás in "Self and Form: The Radicalization of American Poetry from Emily Dickinson to Charles Bernstein" treats the reader to a clear exposition of "[t]he radicalization of American poetry [that] culminates in language writing, which places the creative process under the control of language, thereby doing away with the self that formerly gave cohesion to the text." She illustrates her argument with a marvelous variety of texts from the humorous to the puzzling leaving readers well equipped as they encounter a wide range of American poetry.
The Problems of Literary Genres/Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich, Vol 64 No 1, p. 207-210, 2021
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were ... more third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
In the age of the Anthropocene, capitalism's expansion and damage to the planet can ultimately be... more In the age of the Anthropocene, capitalism's expansion and damage to the planet can ultimately be seen as "becoming extinction" (McBrien). This essay discusses post-neoliberal structurations of space, time, and consciousness by examining the "desert timescapes" featured in Don DeLillo's philosophical novel, Point Omega (2010). The desert, placed at the novel's heart, is analyzed as a prominent religious, aesthetic, and philosophical topos of the crisis of human subjectivity. Furthermore, the investigation of the conceptions in the novel of the "Omega Point" (as the ultimate point of consciousness toward which the universe is heading) reveals an interplay of transcendence and immanence about matter and human evolution and offers a geological perspective of "becoming-mineral." Finally, this paper claims that the "desert timescapes" polychronic perspective challenges anthropocentrism and the ontopolitics of the neoliberal state, and paves the way for reflection on "geontopower" (Povinelli), Life and NonLife in a geophilosophical mode of planetary thinking. (PK)
The "ecoprecarity" induced by the Anthropocene's modes of living vivifies the concern for environ... more The "ecoprecarity" induced by the Anthropocene's modes of living vivifies the concern for environmental sustainability and the development of sustainable and resilient urban communities. A new more synergetic model of human living involves mutual beneficial relationships among humans and more-than-human life-forms by replicating in praxis the symbiotic and mutually reinforcing life-reproducing forms and processes of living systems. The chapter proposes the concept of "smart biocity" through an interdisciplinary dialogue between posthumanism, environmental humanities, and the current urban planning discourses. The depictions of a smart biocity,-a thoroughly hybrid city to come that acknowledges the interplay of human and more-than-human agencies in a complex web of processes-, are investigated in a speculative fiction stories' collection entitled A Flash of Silver Green: Let's Imagine Future Cities. The processes of "symbiomimicry", "symbiogenesis", and "symbiocracy" are proposed to recast who or what counts as a citizen in these smart biocities, as well as to trace how citizenship is articulated symbiotically via communities and urban practices. These different narratives of symbiosis invite us to think of symbiotic citizenship as a procreation of place, originating self in a more-than-human citizens' world. Moreover, it is suggested that current scientific research on sustainable, resilient, livable, and democratic cities might become more inventive in modeling our symbiotic planetary futures by engaging in this dialogue with critical theory and speculative fiction.
Over time outbreaks of infectious diseases have ravaged humanity and sometimes even changed the c... more Over time outbreaks of infectious diseases have ravaged humanity and sometimes even changed the course of history. Pandemics are massive outbreaks of common or emergent contagious diseases, such as the Black Death, leprosy, the Spanish Flu, Ebola, HIV/AIDS, or the worldwide spread now Covid-19. The current pandemic situation has had a noticeable impact on daily life across the globe, and is expected to have variable consequences for future societies. In other words, as Snowden argues, infectious diseases "are as important to understanding societal development as economic crises, wars, revolutions, and demographic change" (Snowden 2019: 15). Epidemics and pandemics have helped us to shape our cultural values and our political practices. Their impact can be examined not only in terms of individual life, but also in terms of religion, the arts and modern medicine. Literature has represented communities suffering from contagion since ancient times. Beginning with Homer's Iliad, which starts with a reference to a plague striking the Greek army at Troy, there are numerous examples of contagion fables (plagues, epidemics, infectious diseases, etc.) in the European literary canon. Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, written in the late 1340s and early 1350s, Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), Jack London's The Scarlet Plague (1912) and Albert Camus' La Peste (1947) are among the most outstanding examples. Pandemics have been depicted in various literary genres such as poetry, prose, theatrical plays, biography, memoir, autobiography, letters, fable etc., and span a great range of non-literary texts as well. In this sense, each pandemic narration conveys knowledge and has its own set of figurations (Charon 2006: 9). This issue aims to contribute to the study of pandemic poetics in Western literary texts of the 20 th and 21 st centuries as well as enrich our critical discussion about contemporary pandemics. Pandemics are represented as life patterns, either as phenomena or metaphors of specific individuals or social situations. Contagion can be broadly characterised as any kind of influence that threatens the agentive control of our health, behaviour, emotions and
Journal of Ecohumanism is an international peer-reviewed journal of scholars, researchers, and st... more Journal of Ecohumanism is an international peer-reviewed journal of scholars, researchers, and students who investigate ecohumanist and civil narratives in the fields of Environmental Humanities, Citizen Humanities, Literary Theory and Cultural Criticism, enabling short accounts of research, debates, study cases, book reviews in this interdisciplinary field of Humanities. The Journal seeks to explore issues beyond the "ecocentric-anthropocentric" binary and to examine the changing status of subjectivity, agency, and citizenship today through the complex relations between nature and techno-culture while encouraging a philosophical rethinking of citizenship in a more-than-human world. Journal of Ecohumanism is currently under review by various indexing and abstracting services.
This chapter examines the esthetical, ethical and cultural issues implicated in contemporary trav... more This chapter examines the esthetical, ethical and cultural issues implicated in contemporary travel writing through a corpus of Modern Greek, european and American travelogues. A concise discussion of the travel writing genre’s history and definitions introduces the issues raised by its current interdisciplinary approach (p.e. anthropological, intercultural, literary, political, geographical). The first part analyzes the travel narration’s types and functions that illustrate a gradual passage of the genre from the aspirations for an “objective” report of the world to more subjective travel interpretations. The second part scrutinizes the narrative techniques in modern and postmodern travel writing. The crisis of representation in the 20th-21st centuries has affected the genre’s tropes to represent the Self, the Other and the World. The authority of the traveller-narrator’s voice is challenged through various narrative devices and strategies of uncertainty in the travelogues, such as the adoption of a playful “post-tourist” narrator’s persona, the fictionalization of the facts of narration or the accrued role of intertextuality as op- posed to referentiality. Finally, in the last part of the chapter are discussed the cultural and ethical issues implicated in travel writing. Although current criticism (p.e. D. Lisle, M. Pratt, J. Kuehn-P. Smethurst, Thompson) has often ascribed to travel writing of the traditional form a Western, eurocentric and colonial agenda by consolidating and disseminating national/racial stereotypes, many contemporary travelogues could claim to adopt a more cosmopolitan vision of a globalized world. This “cosmopolitan gaze” in travel writing can be argued to support a more ethical stance towards alterity by promoting a pluralism of voices and a demand for further transcultural communication, equality and interconnection.
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Books by Peggy Karpouzou
Ο ανά χείρας τόμος επιδιώκει να εισαγάγει τον αναγνώστη στις γόνιμες περιπλανήσεις της Θεωρίας, εντός και εκτός των ορίων της λογοτεχνίας. Οι πενήντα μελέτες του τιμητικού αυτού τόμου για την Άννα Τζούμα, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια Θεωρίας της Λογοτεχνίας του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, μέσα από ένα ευρύ φάσμα κριτικών εννοιών και προσεγγίσεων αναδεικνύουν ειδικές και νέες πτυχές της ποιητικής, της ερμηνείας και της πρόσληψης των λογοτεχνικών κειμένων. Παράλληλα, φιλοδοξούν να προαγάγουν τον διεπιστημονικό διάλογο με τη φιλοσοφία, την πολιτισμική θεωρία, τη γλωσσολογία, τη θεατρολογία, την αρχιτεκτονική, τη θεωρία του χορού και τη νομική επιστήμη.
Papers by Peggy Karpouzou