Stathis Gourgouris
PROFESSOR OF CLASSICS, ENGLISH, AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE & Society (Director
Director of the program of Hellenic Studies, Department of Classics
(212) 854-3902
ssg93@columbia.edu
608 Hamilton Hall
Spring 2025 Office hours: TBA
Research Interests
Literary theory
Modernist poetics
Enlightenment thought
Pre-Socratic philosophy
Experimental music
Contemporary Greek poetry
Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, UCLA 1990. Professor Gourgouris writes and teaches on a broad range of subjects that address the convergence of 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), whose 25th Anniversary Edition was published ( with a new preface) in 2021; Does Literature Think? Literature as Theory for an Antimythical Era (Stanford, 2003); Lessons in Secular Criticism (Fordham, 2013); The Perils of the One (Columbia, 2019); Nothing Sacred (Columbia, 2024); and editor of Freud and Fundamentalism (Fordham, 2010), Thinking with Balibar (Fordham, 2020), and The Cavafy Dossier (2021). In addition, he has also published numerous articles on Ancient Greek philosophy, political theory, modern poetics, film, contemporary music, and psychoanalysis.
He writes regularly in internet media (such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Open Democracy, Al Jazeera, and the Immanent Frame), as well as major Greek newspapers and journals on political and literary matters. Ενδεχομένως Αταξίες [Contingent Disorders] – a collection of such essays on poetics and politics, written in Greek over a period of 25 years (including a number of unpublished pieces) – was published in 2016. He is also an internationally awarded poet, with four volumes of poetry published in Greek, the most recent being Introduction to Physics (Athens, 2005). His work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Turkish, Arabic, Japanese, and Hebrew. His sound and poetry collages have been performed or presented as installations on various occasions internationally – including at Documenta 14 (2017), Megaron Thessalonikis (2018), UKS Archives, Oslo and ICA, London (2023) and Infrasonica (2024). For such music and poetry work see: https://countg.bandcamp.com/ and https://soundcloud.com/stathis-gourgouris
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 (2009-2015); Founder and Director of the Program in Psychoanalytic Studies (2017-2022); President of the Modern Greek Studies Association (2006-2012); and on the Board of Supervisors of the English Institute, Harvard University (2006-2009). He is currently serving on the Executive Council of Panteion University, the Academic Board of Directors of the Cavafy Archive at the Onassis Foundation, and the Advisory Faculty Committee for the Columbia Global Center in Athens. In 2015 he was honored with the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award and in 2023 with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. He is currently the Director of the Program in Hellenic 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”; Part II “Poetics and the Political World”. "
Selected Publications
Nothing Sacred, Columbia University Press, 2024
Dream Nation, 25th Anniversary Edition (with new preface), Stanford University Press, 2020
The Cavafy Dossier (ed.), boundary 2, an international journal of literature and culture, 2021
The Perils of the One. Columbia University Press, 2019
Ενδεχομένως Αταξίες. Athens: Nissos, 2016.
Lessons in Secular Criticism. Fordham University Press, 2013.
Freud and Fundamentalism: The Psychical Politics of Knowledge (ed.). Fordham University Press, 2010.
Έθνος Όνειρο. Athens: Εκδόσεις Κριτική, 2007.
Στοχάζεται η λογοτεχνία; η λογοτεχνία ως θεωρία σε μια αντιμυθική εποχή. Athens: Εκδοσεις Νεφελη, 2006.
Εισαγωγή στη Φυσική. Athens: To Melani, 2005.
Does Literature Think? Literature as Theory for an Antimythical Era. Stanford University Press, 2003.
Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece. Stanford University Press, 1996.
