Elena Pnevmonidou
Position
Director
European Studies Program
Elena Pnevmonidou is the European Studies Director at the Centre for Global Studies.
She received her MA from Queen’s University in 1994 and her PhD from McGill University in 2004. She has been teaching at UVic since 2002, as a Lecturer from 2002-2004 and as an Assistant Professor since 2004. Prior to that, she taught the German language and literature as a graduate student at McGill University until 1999 and as a 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.
Her 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 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.
She received her MA from Queen’s University in 1994 and her PhD from McGill University in 2004. She has been teaching at UVic since 2002, as a Lecturer from 2002-2004 and as an Assistant Professor since 2004. Prior to that, she taught the German language and literature as a graduate student at McGill University until 1999 and as a 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.
Her 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 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.