Maria Varsamopoulou has been employed by the University of the Peloponnese since October 2021 as Special Lecturer in the Department of Performing and Digital Arts, School of Arts. She is a native speaker of English, having spent her formative years in the USA. She holds a degree in English Language and Literature from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, majoring in literature. She obtained her MA from the Departments of English Literature/Women's Studies at Lancaster University (Literature, Linguistics, Religion, History and Stylistics), her MPhil from the University of Glasgow (Deps. English/Centre for the Study of Literature and Theology), and her Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham, Departments of American/Canadian Literature/Critical Theory (with full funding from the Greek State Scholarship Board, I.K.Y.), with a thesis on Anglo-American Dystopias. She has presented talks and published articles in the areas of 20th/21st century utopian and dystopian literature, film and drama, memory and trauma, (self-)sacrifice, postcolonial literature, neo-slave narratives, and feminist performance (under her American name, Maria Varsam). As a TA, she has led seminar groups teaching Contemporary American Literature, Theatre and Film at Nottingham, Leicester and Nottingham Trent Universities as well as English for Academic Purposes in London (Hackney Community College) and at the University of Birmingham. In Greece she has taught English for Specific Purposes at the Merchant Marine Academy, NATO military corps, The National Organisation of Tourism, and IEK Academies for life-long learning. For over a decade, she was an English language examiner for levels B2/C2 (University of Michigan's ELC Exams). She has also worked as a proof-reader/copy editor for various English language publications, especially during her employment at the International Hellenic University (2014-2016). She is currently working on Dawn King’s dystopian dramas.

ORCID: 0000-003-1999-8707

Studies in Utopia and Dystopia (Fiction, Film, Drama)

Memory, Trauma

Neo-Slave Narratives

Gender, Feminist Theory and Women's Writing

Ethics, Agency and Sacrifice

Publications (post 2021)

2021. “A Quantum of Hope? J.M. Coetzee’s Post-Colonial Dystopia, Life and Times of Michael K”. Eds. Lyman Tower Sargent and Raffaella Baccolini, Transgressive Utopianism: Essays in Honour of Lucy Sargisson (Peter Lang)

2022. “The Specter of the Amazon: FEMEN’s Utopian Reappropriation of the Female Breast” in SOUNDINGS, An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 105, no. 2, 2022. pp. 113-142.

2022. “Love’s Reason: Sacrifice, Dystopia and Genre in Lois Lowry’s The Giver”. Ed. Grzegorz Zinkiewicz, Re-Imagining Utopia (Cambridge Scholars Publishing)

2024. “Mary Shelley’s Proto-Dystopian Novels”. Ed. Evy Varsamopoulou, Romantic Futures: Legacy, Prophecy, Temporality (Routledge)

“Afterward(s): A Garland of Fragments: Romanticism and Utopia in Dialogue”.

2026. “Totality and Totalitarianism in Four Hollywood Dystopian Films”. Ed. Matthew Leggatt, Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction (SUNY)