Maria Hadjipolycarpou is Lecturer in Modern Greek Studies.  She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. Before coming to Illinois she taught at Columbia University (2014-2017) and at The City University of New York, Queens College (2017-2019). The Mediterranean remains her main focus and region of interest with a particular emphasis on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Levant, and the relation of Greeks with Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Primary areas of interest include autobiography and history, Cypriot Literature, Byzantine reception, nationalism, partition, decolonization, gender and sexuality, islands in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, mysticism, trauma, and healing. She was a 2013-2014 James A. Winn Graduate Student Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan. She was a 2016-2017 Visiting Fellow at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at New York University. She is co-founder of “Mediterranean Topographies,” an interdisciplinary research group interested in modern Mediterranean culture, literature, language, society, architecture, art, and history.