Stathis Gourgouris

Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, UCLA 1990. Professor Gourgouris writes and teaches on a range of subjects that weave together questions on the poetics and politics of modernity and democracy. He is the author of Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece (Stanford, 1996); Does Literature Think? Literature as Theory for an Antimythical Era (Stanford, 2003); Lessons in Secular Criticism (Fordham 2013); Ενδεχομένως αταξίες [Contingent Disorders] (Athens: Nisos, 2017); The Perils of the One (Columbia, 2019); and editor of Freud and Fundamentalism (Fordham, 2010) and Thinking With Balibar (Fordham, 2020). In addition, he has published numerous articles on Ancient Greek philosophy, political theory, modern poetics, film, contemporary music, and psychoanalysis. He is currently completing work on two other book projects: Nothing Sacred and Synaesthetics of the Polity. He writes regularly in internet media (such as Open Democracy, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera), as well as major Greek newspapers and journals on contemporary political and literary issues. He is also an internationally awarded poet, with four volumes of poetry published in Greek. His work has been translated into French, Italian, German, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. In December 2018, the pioneering electronic composer Lena Platonos premiered six new compositions based on poems from his Introduction to Physics (2005) commissioned by the Megaron Mousikis in Thessaloniki. In 2019 he was one of the published finalists in the V Edition of International Flash Fiction Competition, conducted by the Fundación César Egido Serrano at the Museo de la Palabra in Madrid, Spain. Gourgouris also composes electronic music as Count G (https://countg.bandcamp.com/); an interview about his most recent record Music for Street Rumor can be found at: http://sublamental.com/words/dr-harrison-interviews-count-g Professor Gourgouris has taught Comparative Literature also at Princeton, Yale, UCLA, and the National Technical University in Athens and spent time as Research Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (National Endowment for the Humanities), the International Institute at the University of Michigan, and the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers. He has also served as Director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia (2009-2015); President of the Modern Greek Studies Association (2006-2012); at the Board of Advisors to the C.P. Cavafy Archive at the Onassis Foundation (2017-); and at the Board of Supervisors of the English Institute, Harvard University (2006-2009). In 2015 he was honored with the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award, Columbia’s highest faculty honor. He is currently Director of the Program in Psychoanalytic Studies. An extensive interview covering the whole range of his work can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books: Part I “Dream Nation and the Phantasm of Europe” http://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/dream-nation-and-the-phantasm-of-europe-part-i; Part II “Poetics and the Political World” http://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/poetics-and-the-political-world-obrad-savic-interviews-stathis-gourgouris-part-ii Select Publications The Perils of the One. Columbia University Press, 2019 Ενδεχομένως αταξίες. Athens: Nisos, 2017 Lessons in Secular Criticism. Fordham University Press, 2013 Freud and Fundamentalism. The Psychical Politics of Knowledge. Fordham University Press, 2010 Does Literature Think? Literature as Theory for an Antimythical Era. Stanford University Press, 2003 Στοχάζεται η λογοτεχνία; H λογοτεχνία ως θεωρία σε μια αντιμυθική εποχή. Athens: Εκδόσεις Νεφέλη, 2006 Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece. Stanford University Press, 1996 Έθνος Όνειρο. Athens: Εκδόσεις Κριτική, 2007 Εισαγωγή στη Φυσική. Athens: To Melani, 2005