Instructors

Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis is a Fulbright Scholar and PhD Candidate in the Department of American Literature and Culture of the School of English at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His research interests include LGBT Studies, Performance Studies and Popular Culture Studies, while his dissertation focuses on the aesthetics of camp in contemporary pop music performances and the politics of global gay culture. His academic work has been part of international conferences and journals.
Giorgos Dimitriadis holds a BA in English Language and Literature, an MA in English Literature and a PhD in Cinema Studies, which focuses on visual perception and cognitive theory applied to digital cinema. His research involves aspects of cinematic world-building, with special interest in the ways in which visual mechanics affect the cognitive functions of the human mind and viewers’ comprehension of fictional cinematic worlds. His work revolves around various aspects of new technologies in cinema, narrative comprehension, worldmaking theory and visual culture, and his teaching experience includes courses on the history and theory of cinema, literature, culture, and research & academic writing. He has also been involved in training seminars on the application of cinema and visual media to education.
Sophia Emmanouilidou received her Ph.D. from the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, with distinctions in 2003 and on a full scholarship from the Foundation of National Scholarships in Greece (IKY). She has been a Fulbright grantee at the University of Texas, Austin. She has published several articles on Chicana/o literature and identity-focused theories. Her interests include border cultures, social studies, space theory and ecocriticism. She has lectured at the University of the Aegean, Department of Social Anthropology and History; at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of American Literature; and at the University of the Peloponnese, Department of History and Culture. She is presently affiliated with the Center of Life Long Learning for the Environment and Sustainability in Zakynthos, Greece and with the TEI of the Ionian Islands, Department of Protection and Conservation of Cultural Heritage.
Michalis Kokonis is Professor in the School of English, at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has been offering courses in Contemporary American Fiction and Cinema/Cultural Studies. His research focuses on issues of narratology, semiotics and cultural studies. He has published articles and essays on literary and film theory and criticism, as well as on cultural studies. Among his recent publications are included an essay on the visual culture of New Hollywood Cinema, a chapter on Contemporary Greek Cinema in the collected volume Greek Cinema: Texts, Forms, Identities, and a chapter on videogame culture in the collected volume Digital Media: The Culture of Sound and Spectacle, a book which he also co-edited; also, a chapter on Cognitive Film Semiotics published in the volume International Handbook of Semiotics. Currently he is editor of the Cultural Studies Series, a series of film theory and criticism books translated into Greek.
Ellen Marie Peck is an Associate Professor of Drama at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, where she teaches theatre history, dramatic literature, stage management, and musical theatre history. She is a Fulbright scholar in at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iași, Romania for the 2016-2017 academic year. Ellen specializes in musical theatre with an emphasis on the early twentieth century. She is currently working on a biography of lyricist-librettist Rida Johnson Young for Oxford University Press. She has presented at several national theatre conferences and published articles in Contemporary Theatre Review and Studies in Musical Theatre. Ellen has also worked as a freelance Stage Manager for several theatres and opera companies around the United States, including Michigan Opera Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals, Spoleto Festival USA, and Utah Opera. She has been a member of Actors Equity Association (AEA) since 2000 and the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) since 2001. Ellen received her BA in Theatre from Oakland University, and MA and PhD in Theatre from the University of Illinois.
Anastasia Stefanidou is an adjunct faculty member of the Department of American Literature and Culture, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where she completed her Ph.D. entitled Ethnic and Diaspora Poets of Greek America. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on American poetry and fiction, multiethnic American culture, and research methodology at the same department. Stefanidou was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, a Salzburg Seminar in American Studies Fellowship, a Princeton University Library Fellowship, and a recent Library Research Fellowship from the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection, California State University. She has presented her work at conferences in Greece and abroad and has published articles on Jeffrey Eugenides, prominent Greek American poets such as Nicholas Samaras and Andonis Decavalles, and book reviews for the European Association of American Studies and The National Herald. Her scholarly work on Greek American literature has appeared in such journals as the Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, The Charioteer, the Journal of Modern Hellenism, and The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature. Her translation of historian Dan Georgakas’s book My Detroit: Growing up Greek and American in Motor City was published in 2016.