- PhD, State University of New York at Buffalo (2012)
- MA, State University of New York at Buffalo (2009)
- MA, University of Warwick (2006)
- BA, University of Athens (2003)
- Associate Professor, Nord University (2023-)
- Assistant Professor, Boğaziçi University (2018-2023)
- Associate Professor (Tenured), Valdosta State University (2017-2018)
- Assistant Professor, Valdosta State University (2013-2017)
- Instructor, University of Illinois at Springfield (2012-2013)
19th- and 20th-Century American Literature; Turn-of-the-Century Literature and Culture; Realism and Naturalism; Comparative and Transnational Approaches to Literary Study; Literature and Archaeology; Women’s Fiction; Gender Studies; Edith Wharton
Myrto Drizou is Associate Professor of English at Nord University in Bodø. She joined the Faculty of Education and Arts in 2023 after teaching for several years in the US and Turkey. Her research focuses on American literature, particularly of the 19th- and early 20th centuries. She is interested in realist and naturalist fiction, women’s literature, and the intersections of history, identity, and culture in the study of literary works. She is a specialist on the work of Edith Wharton and has been elected to serve as President of the International Edith Wharton Society (2023-25) after serving as Vice-President (2021-23) and Secretary (2019-21). She has edited the volume Edith Wharton (Critical Insights, 2017) and has published widely on Wharton’s views on time, history, modernity, cosmopolitanism, and exile. Her work on Wharton has appeared in The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton (2022), The New Edith Wharton Studies (Cambridge UP, 2019), Gothic Landscapes: Changing Eras, Changing Cultures, Changing Anxieties (Palgrave, 2016), 49th Parallel: An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies (2016), and Critical Insights: American Writers in Exile (2015). Dr. Drizou also serves as Associate Editor of the Edith Wharton Review published by Pennsylvania State UP.
Dr. Drizou is currently working on a book-length project that examines archaeological themes and practices in 19th- and early-20th-century American literature and culture. She has also published on a range of naturalist authors, such as Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, and Henry Adams, and has edited a special issue on the global politics of American naturalism, which appeared in CR: The New Centennial Review (Michigan State UP) in 2020. She has recently co-edited the volume New Perspectives on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Reading with and against the Grain, published by Edinburgh UP in 2023. She is one of the founding members of the International Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Society and serves on the Society’s Executive Board.
As a teacher and scholar whose academic trajectory spans several continents, Dr. Drizou is keen on pursuing projects of internationalization in education and is interested in academic collaborations across disciplines and cultures.
Dr. Drizou teaches modules in American literature, American Studies, and Research Methods across a range of courses for the Bachelor in English (BAENG) and for Teacher Education. In Fall 2023, Dr. Drizou is teaching an undergraduate Special Topics course on Women’s literature (ENG2024). At the Master’s level, she is currently responsible for a module on short fiction for ENG5001: Critical Reflections on Literature and Language in English Teaching Practices.
Prior to joining Nord University, Dr. Drizou taught at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul as well as Valdosta State University and the University of Illinois at Springfield in the US. She has taught a wide range of courses, such as American and British Literature surveys, Introduction to American Studies, World Literature, Academic Writing, and upper-level as well as MA seminars on realism and naturalism, regionalism, representations of the American self, the Gilded and the Jazz Age, and Edith Wharton.
Dr. Drizou has supervised several undergraduate theses on such authors as Harriet Jacobs, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale Hurston, Willa Cather, Richard Wright, H. P. Lovecraft, Jack Kerouac, and Susan Sontag. She has supervised and has served on committees for MA theses on American and transatlantic literature and has served as an external member for MA comprehensive exams.
Dr. Drizou is available to serve as supervisor or advisor for BA, MA, and PhD theses on American literature and culture; transnational and cross-cultural approaches to literature; teaching literature in the English language classroom; turn-of-the-century fiction; realism; naturalism; women and gender; and Edith Wharton.
Edited Collections
Co-editor. New Perspectives on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Reading with and against the Grain. Edinburgh UP, 2023.
Critical Insights: Edith Wharton. Salem Press, 2017.
Journal Issues
Guest-editor. American Literary Naturalism and the World, special issue of CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 20, no. 3, 2020, pp. 1-205.
Refereed Journal Articles and Book Chapters
“Transatlantic Lloronas: Infanticide and Gender in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Alexandros Papadiamantis.” New Perspectives on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Reading with and against the Grain, edited by Stephanie Palmer, Myrto Drizou, and Cécile Roudeau, Edinburgh UP, 2023, pp. 95-111.
“Reading Freeman Again, Anew.” Co-authored with Stephanie Palmer and Cécile Roudeau. New Perspectives on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Reading with and against the Grain, edited by Stephanie Palmer, Myrto Drizou, and Cécile Roudeau, Edinburgh UP, 2023, pp. 1-21.
“Seeking a Home for the Wretched Exotics: Edith Wharton’s Heterotopic Views of Greece.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, edited by Emily J. Orlando, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, pp. 193-207.
“Edith Wharton’s Odyssey.” The New Edith Wharton Studies, edited by Jennifer Haytock and Laura Rattray, Cambridge UP, 2019, pp. 65-79.
“Wavering in Delight: Time, Progress, and the Turn of the Century in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.” American Literary History and the Turn toward Modernity, edited by Meredith Goldsmith and Melanie Dawson, UP of Florida, 2018, pp. 56-76.
“The Politics of Time in Frank Norris’s Criticism and Fiction.” Excavatio: International Review for Multidisciplinary Approaches and Comparative Studies Related to Émile Zola and Naturalism, vol. XXVIII, 2016.
“The Undecidable Miss Bart: Edith Wharton’s Naturalism in The House of Mirth.” 49th Parallel: An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies, vol. 38, 2016, pp. 21-49.
“‘Go Steady, Undine!’ The Horror of Ambition in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country.” Gothic Landscapes: Changing Eras, Changing Cultures, Changing Anxieties, edited by Sharon Yang and Kathy Healey, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 125-45.
“Edith Wharton: Realist or Naturalist?” Colonial Era to the 19th Century in American Literature, edited by Laura Leibman. Gale, 2016.
“Citizenship in the ‘Land of Letters’: Edith Wharton’s Literary Home in Exile.” Critical Insights: American Writers in Exile, edited by Jeff Birkenstein and Robert Hauhart, Salem Press, 2015, pp. 73-87.
“Introduction.” The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural. By Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. 1903. Hastings College Press, 2015, pp. vii-xxi.
“Floundering between Worlds Passed and Worlds Coming: The Charm of the Unstable Balance in Henry Adams.” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, 2012, pp. 65-86.
Group and Society Memberships:
Nord University
- Member, Humanities, Education and Culture Research Group
Edith Wharton Society
- Associate Editor, Edith Wharton Review, 2018 –
- Book Review Editor, Edith Wharton Review, 2016-2017
- President, 2023-25
- Vice President, 2021-23
- Secretary, 2019-2021
- Chair, Membership Committee, 2014-2018
- Judge, Edith Wharton Society Awards, June 2016
- Reviewer, Edith Wharton International Conference, July 2015
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Society
- Member, Executive Board and Conference Program Committee, 2017 –
Modern Greek Studies Association
- Member, Innovative Initiatives Committee, 2018-2021
Professional Reviews
- Septet: A Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2022 –
- Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: An International Review of English Studies, 2020 –
- Modern Fiction Studies, 2018 –
- Edith Wharton Review, 2018 –
- Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2017 –
- Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 2016 –
- South Atlantic Review, 2014 –
- Studies in Literature and Language, 2012-2015
Previous Departmental and University Committee Work:
Boğaziçi University
- Advisor and Coordinator, Minor Degree in English Literature, 2019-23
- Coordinator, Culture and Art Courses, Western Languages and Literatures, 2020-21
- First-year Student Advisor, Western Languages and Literatures, 2021-23
- Member, Curriculum Development Committee, Western Languages and Literatures, 2020-23
- Member, MA and PhD Admission Committee, Western Languages and Literatures, Spring 2020 & 2023
Valdosta State University
Department
- Chair, Recruitment and Retention Committee, 2015-2018
- Member, Executive Committee, 2015-2018
- Member, Creative Writing and Contemporary Literature Committee, 2017-2018
- Member, Search Committee, 2016-2017
- Member, Assessment Committee, 2014-2016
- Member, World Literature Committee, 2013-2015
- Member, World Literature Subcommittee for Revision of Required Elements, 2014-2015
- Co-Sponsor, Sigma Tau Delta English Honour Society, 2014-2018
College of Arts and Sciences
- Member, Social Media and Marketing Committee, 2016-2018
University
- Member, Task Force on Student Retention and Core Curriculum Innovation, 2016-2018
- Member, Minority and Diversity Issues Committee, 2014-2018
University of Illinois at Springfield
Department
- Member, Curriculum Committee, 2012-2013
“The United States’ Legacy and its Declining Credibility.” Democracy on the Front Lines: Polarization, Culture and Resilience in America and the World. Salzburg Global Seminar, 2023.
——-
Five Reasons to Read Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Today
