Nikos TH. Panagiotaras

Nikos Th. Panagiotaras was born in Amaliada in 1955. He studied Psychology of Literature in Saint Louis, Missouri, Educational Psychology, World Literature, English Philology, and Philosophy in the History of Peoples (1974-1980). He worked on three postgraduate theses: "Shakespeare in Our Days without Oracles," "Eliot and Seferis: Parallel Lives in the 21st Century," and "What Montessori Does in Our Garden: The Art of Education, the Outcome of Learning." In 1977, under the direction of Naomi Burton Stone and the guidance of Rossario Mazza, he began his doctoral dissertation on "The Sorrow of Love through Poetry: from Pablo Neruda to Khalil Gibran," which was completed in 1981, two years later than planned. He served as a foreign student advisory director in the tertiary educational program "Orientation U.S.A." at Notre Dame University, Indiana, and Saint Louis University, Missouri. Since 1978, he has been working as a World Literature professor at Fontbonne University, Saint Louis, and Washington University, Saint Louis. He taught Ancient Greek Tragedy at the University of Tucson, Tucson, Arizona. He teaches English as a second language to foreign students and oversees the administration of T.O.E.F.L. exams from 1979 to 1981. He entered the literary world in 1973 with three poetry collections, but his first and most significant books were "In the Heart of Enceladus" (1975) and "Someone Cracked the Fountain of Knowledge" (1977). As a guide in political poetry, he has dedicated himself to the survival of the Greek language and the art of writing and poetry. Today, he teaches literature through a distance learning program and is a member of the philological chair "The Impact of Greek Literature in Western Civilization" at U.C.L.A., University of California, Los Angeles.