Graduate Spotlight: Konstantinos Pozoukidis

Interview with PhD candidate Konstantinos Pozoukidis

What was the title of your dissertation?

The title of my Dissertation is “Surviving Romanticism: Disaster And Survival In Late Eighteenth-Century And Early Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Literature.” The title plays with the structural ambiguity, syntactically speaking, that the gerund introduces in the word “surviving”. My dissertation centers, on the one hand, on those literary characters and historical actors who survive the disasters of the Romantic period, in England and in the Black Atlantic.

At the same time, my project approaches Romanticism as an academic discipline that currently experiences, along with other disciplines in the Humanities, the neoliberal disaster of our institutions, by being deemed inapplicable in our contemporary world, unmarketable, non-generative profit-wise, and thus, useless, allegedly.

What are your research interests?

Along with Romantic texts and contexts and their relation to disaster, my research interests include Critical Theory, Queer Studies, Critical Race Theory and Disability Studies. I approach all these research topics as interpretive avenues that allow me to explore forms of survival its relation to temporality, futurity, non-generativity, and radical world change. 

Why did you decide to study English at UMD?

I decided to apply for my Ph.D. at the English department. at UMD to work with my current advisor, Orrin N. C. Wang. The English department at UMD ranks very high and I had the pleasure of working with numerous faculty members that are extremely talented. Orrin has a theoretical understanding of things that is unique, though. Working with Orrin at UMD has shaped my research methodology and my theoretical thought profoundly.

What job/field are you interested in after graduation?

I think that is a tough question to answer. Several of us, Ph.D. candidates in the department, have been working towards our academic CVs for more than a decade, even before our Ph.Ds, striving for more publications, more conference presentations, and a substantial teaching portfolio. Our goal has been to join the English department of some institution as tenure-track members, a job that would allow us to continue our teaching and research. For most disciplines in English and American studies, the academia does not offer any such jobs anymore.

What was a memorable project you worked on during your graduate program?

Publishing my first paper has been my most challenging project so far, and memorable for this reason. As a scholar in the Humanities, one needs to find those journals that welcome your methodological approach to texts and contexts. This is a time-consuming process that often entails many rejections before an acceptance is granted to you.

People in academia overemphasize the argument’s merit when it comes to publications, when, in reality, you need to present a well-composed paper with an innovative argument to an audience (editor and reviewers) that is truly open to read and contemplate on and with your paper.