About Me

Vassiliki

Rapti

LUDICS SEMINAR CO-FOUNDER & CO-CHAIR,

MAHINDRA HUMANITIES CENTER,

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

FOUNDING FIRECTOR, CITIZEN TALES COMMONS

Vassiliki Rapti, Ph.D., is Founding Director of the Cambridge based non-profit organization Citizen TALES Commons and is also Co-chair of the Ludics Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University.

She has received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with an Emphasis in Drama from Washington University-in-St. Louis in 2006. She joined Harvard University in fall 2008 as Preceptor in Modern Greek. Before coming to Harvard, she was the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Teaching Assistant Professor in Modern Greek at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (2005-2008). She studied Greek language and literature at the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens (BA, 1988) and the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne (D.E.A.,1993) and received a Certificate on French Civilization from the University of Paris-New Sorbonne III (1992). She also attended the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations ( I.NA.L.C.O.) in Paris, France (1993-1996). She also holds a M.A. in English from the University of Missouri-St. Louis (2000).

She is the author of the monographs Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond (Ashgate, 2013) and Air, Water, Earth, Fire in the Poetry of Nikos Engonopoulos (Romi, 2015) and of the poetry collections, Bathed in Moonlight (Cervena Barva Press, 2023), H λεπταίσθητη Λαίδη μου (Melani, 2021), Transitorium (Somerset Hall Press, 2015) and IA SONGS; For Voice and Violoncello (with Kostas Rekleitis, Musica Ferrum, 2015). She has also translated and edited the book Nightfall Hotel by Nanos Valaoritis: A Surrealist Romeo and Juliet (Somerset Hall Press, 2016), the poetry collection Avaton by Dimitrios Bafaloukos (Somerset Hall Press, 2016) and the Carmen-Francesca Banciu's book Light Breeze in Paradise/Ελαφρύ αεράκι στον Παράδεισο (PalmArt Press, 2017). She has also founded the Washington University journal Theatron, of which she was co-editor (2002-2005). She has also edited Sofia Pappanikolaou's collection of short stories Σκόρπια ζωή: Αφηγήσεις μιας Eλληνίδας του Μπρούκλυν (Αμαζον, 2023) and she has co-edited (with Eric Gordon) the volume Ludics: Play as Humanistic Inquiry (Palgrave-McMillan 2021).

Dr. Rapti's publications and research interests center upon literary theory, especially ludic theory and translation theory, comparative literature and contemporary world literature, avant-garde theatre and performance with an emphasis in Surrealism and classical reception studies, Modern Greek literature, theater, and cinema, poetry translation, Cultural Studies, Greek Diaspora and creative writing. She also conducts research on Modern Greek language pedagogy with a focus on teaching with technology. She was a keynote speaker at the Missouri Modern Languages and Modern Technologies (MO3) Conference in June 2009. She has published and delivered a range of papers on her current research topics on Ludics in surrealist theatre and contemporary adaptations of Greek drama, Greek theatre, cinema and literature, as well as on innovative, creativity-driven, approaches to teaching Modern Greek as a Second Language.

Her poetry has been published in various journals including Eliot Review, Levure Littéraire, Poetix, (De)kata, Stachtes, Poeticanet and Theuth, among others, and has been performed in the United States, Greece, Turkey and Scotland. She is the recipient of many distinctions, scholarships, awards and grants including the Greek State Scholarship (IKY), the Second Prize of the 1998 Parnassos Poetry Contest, the Mellon Dissertation Scholarship, the Washington University’s Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2003), the Faculty Meritorious Service Award from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and a series of Certificates of Teaching Excellence from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard (2008-2015).Drawing on ludic theory, creativity and innovation, she is particularly interested in the intersections of literature, arts and technology and their impact on society. Her Fall 2014 art-making course "Introduction to the Poetry of Nobel Laureate George Seferis" was the recipient of the Elson Family Arts Initiative award at Harvard University, where she has also developed an innovative video-performance collaborative project-based teaching method.

LINKS

https://harvard.academia.edu/VassilikiRapti