Background
Zoja Pavlovskis-Petit is Professor of Comparative Literature and Classics. She has been teaching at 91社区 (formerly Harpur College) since 1962.
Her current research concentrates on writing a monograph tentatively titled Poetry as Spiritual Refuge: Creative Memory in Late Latin Literature, a book on bilingualism as the main source of Nabokov's ironies, and several other projects. She is also working on a translation of the German version of Zenta Maurina's autobiographic trilogy. Her poetry has been published in periodicals such as the new renaissance, Modern Haiku, Cicada (a Best of Issue award), and others. Her research is increasingly taking a semiotic approach.
In undergraduate teaching she centers on three areas: classical mythology; a course on fairy tale study, which she developed and introduced at a time when this discipline was virtually unknown at American departments dealing with literature; and a sequence of three courses dealing with psychological, philosophic, and socio-historical significance of love stories, from classical Greece to, and into, the 20th century. Her seminar-type graduate courses deal with: irony; metaphor; myth criticism; ancient literary criticism; and comedy. In addition to serving the university, she has recently begun to offer courses as a volunteer at the local Lyceum, an organization of older people eager to learn, and in this context has given classes on Jungian interpretation of fairy tales, William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, Ovid's love stories, and films based on myth.
Education
- PhD, MA, Cornell University
- BA, Bryn Mawr College