Past Events
2004-2005
September 29th, 2004
A CONTINENT AS BIG AS CHINA: HELLENISM IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF GEORGE SEFERIS
Roderick Beaton, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language & Literature, King's College, London
October 25th, 2004
THE GREEK HISTORICAL NOVEL (1850-1880),
CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY AND WALTER SCOTT
Michael Paschalis, Professor of Classics, Department of Philology, University of Crete, Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Visiting Scholar
Sponsored by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation University Seminars Program
October 27th, 2004
UGO FOSCOLO, ANDREAS KALVOS, AND THE CLASSICS: CONSTRUCTIONS OF A BIRTHPLACE
Michael Paschalis, Professor of Classics, Department of Philology, University of Crete, Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Visiting Scholar
Sponsored by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation University Seminars Program
November 9th, 2004
PUBLIC HISTORY & THE DISCOURSE OF EMPIRE: VENICE DURING THE WAR OF THE MOREA, 1684-1699
Anastasia Stourati, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University
Sheldon Scheps Lecture in Department of Anthropology
THE BALKAN MEDIA EVENT: FROM TV HERO TO CASSETTE HERO AND BACK
Penelope C. Papailias
Department of History, Archaeology, and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly, Greece
Co-sponsored by the Program in Hellenic Studies
December 8th, 2004
THE LEGACY OF THE ATHENS 2004 OLYMPIC GAMES
Hon. Ms. Fanny Palli-Petralia
Alternate Minister of Culture, Hellenic Republic
Co-sponsored by the Columbia University Hellenic Association
March 22nd ,2005
Yiannis Kiortsakis
The novelist reads from his acclaimed prose work, Like a Novel [San Mythistorema] (Athens; Kedros, 1995), and discussed it in relation to notions of nostos, homecoming and homelessness in the Greek and European literary tradition
March 30th, 2005
BUILD-OPERATE AND TRANSFER: PUBLIC WORKS IN ANCIENT GREECE
T.P. Tassios Professor Emeritus, Department of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Co-sponsored by the Dean of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, Columbia University; the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation; and the Program in Hellenic Studies, Columbia University
IN PSYCHARIS'S READING ROOM
Karen Van Dyck, Kimon A. Doukas Professor of Hellenic Studies, Columbia Respondent: Peter Mackridge
April 27th , 2005
The Thirteenth Kimon A. Doukas Memorial Lecture
DIASPORAS, HOMELANDS, OLD AND NEW WORLD ORDERS
Khachig Tölölyan, Professor of English, Wesleyan University
The Modern Greek Seminar at the University Seminars Program Columbia University
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/hellenicstudies/seminar.html
The University Seminar Movement has flourished for over fifty years at Columbia, growing from the original five seminars in 1945 to approximately seventy-five seminars today. Each seminar acts as an autonomous and voluntary grouping of scholars and practitioners brought together under the auspices of Columbia University by their dedication to a particular line of investigation. The movement is not only interdisciplinary, but inter-institutional, and involves members of the community who might not otherwise participate in university activity. The seminars have as their central goal the integration of otherwise fragmented knowledge, a pulling together of the many threads of knowledge and experience through the stimulus of continuing discussion.
The Modern Greek Seminar was established in February 2005. Participation is by invitation and attendees are chiefly faculty members and Ph.D students in Hellenic Studies as well as artists and writers from the tri-state area of New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. This new seminar's title emphasizes the language -modern Greek over the metropolitan nation-state, modern Greece.
By so doing, the seminar uses the enduring and versatile nature of the language as a symbol for broader themes that, both diachronically and synchronically, depict the tension between sameness and difference, between the continuities and discontinuities that comprise the Hellenic world. The seminar does not limit its focus to Modern Greece, even though it remains its foremost concern, instead it seeks to provide a forum for original interdisciplinary perspectives on Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Greece and the Greek diaspora. Seminar participants from a wide variety of fields consider all aspects of the post-classical Greek world as well as the reception and creative appropriation of the classical Greek tradition both in Greece and abroad. The seminar examines Greek relations with Western Europe, the Balkans, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus and the Middle East, tracing also the cultural presence of historic Greek communities in these areas as well as in more recent diasporas, in the United States and Australia. The seminar also examines the presence of diverse communities within Greece.
The seminar is directed by Professor Vangelis Calotychos (Acting Director of Hellenic Studies, Department of Classics, Columbia University). Ms. Karen Emmerich, a graduate student in Columbia's Department of English and Comparative Literature, who specializes in Greek poetry, serves as the seminar's rapporteur and administrator. The seminar meets on a monthly basis throughout the academic year. Two meetings took place at the end of the academic year 2004-05:
May 2nd ,2005
GREEK AS A SACRED LANGUAGE: TRANSLATING THE NEW TESTAMENT INTO MODERN GREEK
Peter Mackridge, Professor of Modern Greek Emeritus, Oxford University
Related Events at Columbia:
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Tuesday, March 1
Women Poets at Barnard Spring 2005 Reading Series Eleni Sikelianos & Frank Bidart
Nota Kourou
Professor of Early Iron Age Aegean Archaeology, University of Athens Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Visiting Scholar
The Alexander S. Onassis Foundation of New York sponsored a series of lectures at Columbia University of interest to scholars of the ancient Mediterranean:
Monday, March 7 "From a refuge site to an extensive fortified settlement: Tenos-Xobourgo in the Cyclades"
Tuesday, March 8 "The bull and the ptnia: continuity and break in Aegean culture
Wednesday, March 9 "Cypriots and Phoenicians in the Aegean in the Early Iron Age"
Wednesday, March 9
Anne Carson and Alexander Nehamas on "The Question of Translation"
The Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University
Tuesday, April 5
"Toward a Modern Sociological Jurisprudence of International Law?"
Achilleas Scordas University of Athens, Faculty of Law The Columbia University Hellenic Association and the J.S.D. Colloquium
Monday, April 11
"Mount Athos: History and Culture of a Byzantine Monastic Colony" Prof. John McGuckin, Columbia University Fr. George Zugravu, Columbia University A.E. Siecinski, Fordham University
The Harriman Institute, the Institute for the Study of Europe, the East Central European Center, the Njegos Endowment for Serbian Language & Culture at Columbia University, and Union Theological Seminary.
Tuesday, April 19
"Stranger at the Borders of Europe" Obrad Savic, Acting President of the Belgrade Circle NGO
The Harriman Institute and the Center for Comparative Literature and Society present The Post Soviet Comparativisms Series