Dr. Elena Pnevmonidou
Position
Contact
Credentials
PhD (McGill)
Area of expertise
Discourses about gender and culture during the 18th and early 19th century; Critical Theory; and the intersection of politics and art in the early 20th century
Elena was appointed Director of European Studies in August 2018. She received her MA from Queen’s University in 1994 and her PhD from McGill University in 2004. Elena has been teaching at UVic since 2002, as Lecturer from 2002-2004 and as Assistant Professor since 2004. Prior to that, Elena taught German language and literature as a graduate student at McGill University until 1999 and as Lecturer at Bishop’s University from 1999-2002. Her dissertation (’Liebes-Töten’: Zur Objektwerdung der Frau im Roman der Frühromantik. Novalis’ “Heinrich von Ofterdingen”, Hölderlins “Hyperion” und Schlegels “Lucinde”), which received the CAUTG dissertation prize in 2005, examines early romantic aesthetic theory through the conceptualizations of the feminine contained in the novels of Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Friedrich Hölderlin, and Friedrich Schlegel.
Elena's research focuses on the intersection between romantic aesthetic theory and romantic conceptualizations of the “other,” be it the other gender or the cultural other, such as the Orient. With regards to the issue of gender, she is not only interested in male representations of the feminine, but also in the ways in which female writers of the period situate their own conceptualizations of gender in relation to romantic aesthetic theory. She has recently begun carving out a second research area in early 20th century German literature through a forthcoming publication on representations of the body in the writings of Bertolt Brecht and Franz Kafka.
More information about Elena can be found via the link below.
https://www.uvic.ca/humanities/germanicslavic/people/home/faculty/profiles/pnevmonidouelena-.php