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CMGS Past Events Archive |
2007
October 11 , 2007
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Demosthenes Agrafiotis Demosthenes Agrafiotis, visiting from his home in Athens, Greece, is an experimentalist who deftly combines poetry, painting, photography, intermedia, and performance with the written poem. He has authored over 13 books of poetry (in Greek and French) and essays (dedicated to analysizing different forms of art as cultural phenomenon), and exhibited his photography, paintings, drawings, and installations internationally, with a special interest in the relations between art and new technologies. His anthology-formatted magazine Clinamen (1980–90, co-published by Erato Publications in Athens, 1991–94) presented an amalgam of Greek poetry and art alongside work from Europe and America (with many first translations into Greek of prominent American and European poets). Also Professor of Sociology at the National School of Public Health in Athens, Demosthenes Agrafiotis will be making his first San Francisco appearance. This event is co-sponsored by the Poetry Center, SFSU
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November 8 , 2007
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Dr. Diane Touliatos Thursday, November 8th Although women’s involvement in music and the arts was not generally acknowledged until the early 1980s, women have always been involved in music and arts from the earliest of times. This lecture, based on Prof. Touliatos’ original research, will focus on the earliest known women composers in history that happen to originate during the epochs of Ancient Greece and Medieval Byzantium. Some of these women were known and celebrated during their time but later forgotten. A historical, visual, and musical legacy will be presented of these women (over twenty in number) and their important, innovative contributions to music. Their historical legacy will show the evolution of these women composers with an emphasis being devoted to the presentation of the works (music examples provided) by Sappho from Antiquity and Kassia from the early ninth century A.C.E., the latter being the earliest woman composer for whom there is preserved music. Dr. Diane Touliatos is the Director of The Center for the Humanities and a Professor of Musicology at the University of Missouri -St. Louis. She is the author of A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music Collection of the National Library of Greece (Ashgate, 2007). The National Library of Greece (Ethnike Bibliothike tes Ellados) is one of the richest depositories of Byzantine musical manuscripts and is surpassed by its holdings in Greece only by the multitude of manuscripts found in the monasteries of Mount Athos. In spite of being such a rich archive, the National Library has never published a catalog of its musical manuscripts - not all of which are Byzantine or Greek, but also encompass Turkey, the Balkans, Italy, Cyprus, and parts of Western Europe. The purpose of this catalog is to recover or, in some instances, to present for the first time the repertory of the musical sources of the library.
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November 12 , 2007
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Dr. Tom Davis The island of Cyprus has been a rich center of Hellenic culture since ancient times. Current archaeological investigations are revealing the earliest settlements of the distant past, the flourishing of the city kingdoms, and the prominence of the early Christian period. Dr. Tom Davis, director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute in Nicosia, will present an illustrated talk on the latest discoveries, shedding new light on this important heritage. This event is co-sponsored by: Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute
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| May 10, 2007
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André Gerolymatos, Professor of History and Director of the Hellenic Studies Program, Simon Fraser University Andre´ Gerolymatos is a Professor of International Studies and History at Simon Fraser University. In addition, he is the Hellenic Canadian Congress of BC Chair in Hellenic Studies. Within the School of International Studies, Dr. Gerolymatos specializes in intelligence, military and diplomatic history. His interests include the role of intelligence organizations in warfare with particular emphasis on the implementation of guerrilla and urban warfare in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as well as terrorism as a recent byproduct. He has done research on how these aspects of conflict impact on international politics and diplomacy. He has examined the evolution of conflict in Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East within the context of these themes and continues to observe the pervasive influence of intelligence organizations on the state. Dr. Gerolymatos brings a wide range of experience to the School of International Studies that ranges from academia to government work. |
May 2, 4 & 5, 2007
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Antonios Kotidis, Professor of Art History, Aristotle University of Thessanloniki, Greece Dr. Antonis Kotidis is Professor of Art History in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. He studied History and Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and was awarded his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Athens in 1982. He has studied Western art (from the Middle Ages to the present) at institutions, museums, private collections and art galleries in Europe and the USA. Among his publications are the books: The Painter Maleas (Thessaloniki, 1982), On Parthenis (Thessaloniki, 1984), Modernism and "Tradition" in the Greek Art of the Interwar Period (Thessaloniki, 1993), Greek Painting of the 19th century (Athens, 1995), Maleas (Athens, 2000), Alexis Barkoff (Athens, 2000), Post-War Greek Art:1948-2000 (Athens, 2000), Triantafyllidis: An Alternative Style in Painting of the Greek Thirties (Thessaloniki,2002). He has participated in collective editions, among others, the Greek edition of Rizzoli's Raphael (Athens, 1995), World Art Volume of the Educational Greek Encyclopedia (Athens, 1998), Tetsis (Athens, 1999), Dictionary of Greek Artists: Melissa (Athens 1997-2000), The History of Greek Nation: Ekdotike, XVI, (Athens, 2000), National Gallery, The Centennial : Four Centuries of Greek Painting (Athens, 2000). He has published numerous essays in art historical periodicals and freelance articles in the dailies I Kathimerini and To Vima. He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of The National Gallery, Athens, and has served as Chariman and Vice-President of the State Theatre of Northern Greece. This event was sponsored by the Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA) |
March 1, 2007
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Theodore Couloumbis, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Athens Greece Theodore A. Couloumbis is Professor Emeritus at the University of Athens, Division of European and International Studies. He is also Vice-President of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), having served over the years as Member of the Board of Directors and Director General of this non-profit think tank. During 1995-96 he was a senior fellow with the United States Institute of Peace in Washington DC, and currently, he is a policy scholar with the Southeast Europe Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His work focuses on conflict resolution in the post-Cold War international setting and on aspects of Greek foreign policy. He is co-author (with James H. Wolfe) of a well-known text book, International Relations: Power and Justice, Prentice Hall, 4th ed. 1990, author of US, Greece and Turkey: The Troubled Triangle (Praeger,1983) and co-editor of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (Frank Cass and ELIAMEP).
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February 7, 2007
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Aliki Barnstone, Professor of English, University of Las Vegas THE HORSES OF ACHILLES Aliki Barnstone is a poet, translator, critic, and editor. Her books of poems are Blue Earth (Iris, 2004), Wild With It (Sheep Meadow, 2002), a National Books Critics Circle Notable Book, Madly in Love (Carnegie-Mellon, 1997), Windows in Providence (Curbstone, 1981), and The Real Tin Flower (which was introduced by Anne Sexton and was published by Macmillan in 1968, when she was twelve years old). Her translation, The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy came out with W.W. Norton in 2006. She has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize twice. This event was co-sponsored by the Poetry Center, SFSU |
2006
November 10, 2006
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Tryfon Tolides IMMIGRANT My mother called this morning, kept trailing away, I WILL SWEEP What will you do in the village alone in the house ALMOND TREE I miss smashing the green-covered shells, I miss the outhouse. I miss the wind blowing I miss the small door to the fallen balcony I miss the smell of fried eggs, potatoes and cheese. I miss the wood-paneled radio with the voices I miss the dogs at midnight and the church gates I miss the bundles of tree limbs, the crackling fires, I miss going down hills on wood sleds I miss the barbed wire fence around the orchard I miss the spring water. I miss the plug to the tap I miss the walk to the spring. I miss the black sky. Tryfon Tolides was born in Korifi Voiou, Greece. He has completed a BFA in Creative Writing at the University of Maine, and an MFA at Syracuse University. He has received a Reynolds Scholarship, the 2004 Foley Poetry Prize, and his manuscript, An Almost Pure Empty Walking, was a 2005 National Poetry Series selection and published by Penguin Press in 2006. His work has appeared in America, Atlanta Review, Poetry Daily, Worcester Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Farmington, Connecticut. This event was co-sponsored by the Poetry Center, SFSU
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| May 15, 2006
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Anne Carson, Professor of Classics and English, University of Michigan Poet, essayist, and renowned translator from Ancient Greek Anne Carson is the celebrated author of numerous works, from her innovative early classical study Eros the Bittersweet, through recent works including The Beauty of the Husband, Men in the Off Hours, and, most recently, Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera, she has been presenting a unique hybrid work, ranging intellectually from the archaic to the stunningly contemporary. Ms. Carson’s translations of the complete works of Sappho were published as If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho. This event was co-sponsored by the Poetry Center, SFSU |
April 25-27, 2006
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Vassilis Colonnas, Professor of Architecture, University of Thessaly Professor Vassilis Colonas graduated from the School of Architecture at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1979 and continued his studies in Paris, in the fields of monument restoration (Centre des Études Supérieures d’ Histoire et de Conservation des Monuments Anciens, 1979-81) and art history and museology (University of Paris I, 1979-1985), while at the same time working in the French Academy of Architecture (1982-1985). He earned his doctorate from the School of Architecture at Aristotle University in 1992. He has taken part in numerous academic conferences in Greece and abroad, and has published studies in Greek and foreign books and periodicals. He has been involved in the rehabilitation and restoration of historic monuments and complexes and won awards in related architectural competitions. He has worked in the fields of exhibition organization and museology, and has been a member of numerous research programs relating to the architectural heritage of the 19th and 20th centuries in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean countries. He has taught in post-graduate seminars at the Metsovion Polytechneion of Athens (1998-2001), Princeton University (1994, 1998) and the University of Crete (2000-02, 2005). Since 2002, he has held the post of Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Thessaly. In 1999 he was awarded the title of the Chevalier of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his work on 19th-century Italian architects in the Ottoman Empire. His last book is a study of the Italian Architecture in the Dodecanese (1912-1943), (OLKOS Publications, Athens 2002). This event was sponsored by the Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA)
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March 21, 2006
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Dr. Lidia Santarelli, Hannah Seegar Postdoctoral Fellow, Hellenic Studies Program, The experience of the Italian occupation in Greece has been generally neglected by scholars who have dealt with the history of the Second World War and of the Axis-occupied Europe. This talk calls into question the conventional view of Fascist Italy's expansionism as an imperialism with a human face. From this perspective, it discussed the impact of the Italian occupation on the Greek economy and its society, as well as the controversial issue of war crimes, focusing on the military violence exerted by Italian troops towards the civilian population. Dr. Lidia Santarelli was formerly the Hannah Seeger Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University. She has completed her PhD in History and Civilization at the European University Institute of Florence (Italy), with a thesis on the Italian occupation of Greece during the Second World War. She taught Modern History at the University La Sapienza of Rome (2002-2005), as well as History of South-Eastern Europe at the University of L'Aquila, Italy (2003-2005). She has extensively published in Italy and abroad on the topics related to her research activity. Her main areas of interest include war, civil war and ethnic conflicts, nation-building and nation state in the Balkans, Fascist culture and ideology, military violence, war crimes, systems of occupation.
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March 13, 2006
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Dr. Theodore Pangalos, Former Greek Minister of External Affairs and Former Greek Minister of Culture Dr. Pangalos lectured on the political history of Cyprus against the backdrop of U.S. - Greek relations, culminating in his perspective on the recent Annan Plan that has been proposed by the U.N. This event was sponsored by the Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA)
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February 24, 2006
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Michael Dukakis, Former Governor, Senator Nicholas Petris Lecture Former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis discussed "Health Care: The Uninsured -- 45 Million ... and Counting" for the Nicholas C. Petris Lecture. Dukakis currently teaches political science at University of California, Los Angeles, and Northeastern University. This event was co-sponsored by the Modern Greek Studies Foundation
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February 17, 2006
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Thomas Doulis, Emeritus Professor of English, Portland State University This talk addressed the literature produced by literarti under the harsh conditions of the military junta in Greece. As Professor Doulis argued, "The Military Junta's brutal censorship of culture, coming as a culmination of decades of divisiveness between the established and monarchist Right and the opposition Left and democratic Center, was designed to silence critics. To the great surprise of the military dictators, however, their ham-fisted approach united the writers and brought about the reconciliation of the previously fragmented culture." Professor Doulis began his literary career as a writer of fiction and has published two novels, Path for our Valor (1963) and The Quarries of Sicily (1969.) Since then, he has published several literary studies: Disaster and Fiction, the Impact of the Asia Minor Disaster of 1922 on Modern Greek Fiction and Out of the Ashes, a study of the 19th century novel in katharevousa. Recently he translated what is considered the first social novel of Greece, Thanos Vlekas. He has also published two photographic studies of an ethnic group in the Pacific Northwest, A Surge to the Sea: The Greeks in Oregon (1977) and Landmarks of Our Past: The First Seventy-Five Years of the Greek Orthodox Community of Oregon (1983).
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November 19, 2005
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Memorial Event Honoring Helen Papanikolas The Center for Modern Greek Studies held a memorial event honoring the work of Greek American novelist and short story writer, Helen Papanikolas. Not limited only to her impressive creative work, Papanikolas is known also for her vast contribution to labor and immigration history and had specifically worked and down research on the experience of Greek immigrants in Utah and other western states. Participants included both Helen Papanikolas's son Zeese and grandson Nick Smart, who co-edited the final novel of Helen Papanikolas, Rain in the Valley, Dr. Spyros Orfanos, and Adjunct Professor Artemis Leontis, Coordinator of the Modern Greek Program at the University of Michigan.
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October 12, 13 & 19, 2005
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Peter Bien, Emeritus Professor, Dartmouth College, Visiting Kazantzakis Scholar Peter Bien, Emeritus Professor of English, Dartmouth College, presented a series of three lectures as Visiting Kazantzakis scholar in a course offered on the author's work, MGS/CW 426, Kazantzakis. Drawing on the second volume of his soon-to-be published study, Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit (forthcoming, Princeton University Press), Professor Bien's first two lectures concentrated on two of Kazantzakis' most well-known novels, Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ. The first lecture addressed the philosophical and nationalist-ideological dimensions of Zorba the Greek; based on Professor Bien's first-hand reading of Kazantzakis' own personal notebooks, the second lecture discussed metaphysical ideas permeating the novel The Last Temptation of Christ. The third lecture entitled "Inventing Greece," dealt with the question of nationalism in Modern Greek letters and concentrated on the Greek Enlightenment period. This lecture was recently published as a full-length article in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. A distinguished scholar and translator of the work of Nikos Kazantzakis and other Modern Greek writers, Professor Bien is the author of Kazantzakis and the Linguistic Revolution in Greek Literature (1972) and Kazantzakis' Report to Greco and The Last Temptation of Christ as well as Statis Myrivilis' Life in the Tomb. He is also a major contributor to Greek Today, a recently published textbook on Modern Greek language (2004), and A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900-2000, a major anthology of Modern Greek poetry (2004). Known as a pioneer in the field of Modern Greek Studies, Professor Bien has served as a founding member and President of the Modern Greek Studies Association and has been a long-standing Editor of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. These lectures were co-sponsored by the College of Humanities, SFSU |
May 19, 2005
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Professor Gonda Van Steen Professor Van Steen is an Associate Professor of Classics and Modern Greek at the University of Arizona. She has published widely in the field of Modern and Ancient Greek drama. She has also won the 2000 John D. Criticos Prize from the London Hellenic Society and was a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the Center for Human Values, Princeton University.
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April 21, 2005
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Conversation with Greek filmmaker, Costas Gavras Costa Gavras is known for his rare talent to merge controversial political issues with the entertainment value of commercial cinema. Law and justice, oppression, legal/illegal violence, and torture are common subjects in his work, especially relevant to his earlier films such as "Z." Costa Gavras is an expert of the “statement” picture, an art form slowly vanishing from the studios of cut-throat, capital-driven cinema. In the five decades of his career as writer and director, Costa-Gavras has explored some extremely difficult terrain. State of Siege (screenplay, 1973) concerns the systems of torture and violence present during the conflict between Uruguay’s government and the Tupamaro guerrillas in the early 1970s. L'Aveu (The Confession, direction, 1970) follows the path of Artur London, a Czechoslovakian communist arrested for treason and espionage by Stalin’s regime. A more recent work, Amen, (screenplay & direction, 2002) returns to the WWII story of Pope Pius XII, who refused to publicly condemn the holocaust despite repeated pleas from an SS officer, Kurt Gerstein. Costa-Gavras was born to a poor family in the village of Loutra Iraias, Arcadia. His family spent the Second World War in a village in the Peloponnese, and moved to Athens after the war. His father had been a member of the left-wing EAM branch of the Greek Resistance, and was imprisoned after the war as a suspected communist. His father's record made it impossible for him to attend university or emigrate to the United States, so after high school Costa-Gavras went to France, where he began his law studies in 1951. In 1956, he left his university studies to study film at the French national film school, IDHEC. After film school, he apprenticed under Yves Allegret, and became an assistant director for Jean Giono and Rene Clair. After several further positions as first assistant director, he directed his first feature film, Compartiment Tueurs, in 1965. Costa-Gavras was president of the Cinémathèque française from 1982 to 1987. This event was sponsored by the Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA) |
March 17, 2005
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Patricia Clark, Adjunct Professor of Greek and Roman Studies, University of Victoria, B.C. "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme: Exploring Traditional Healing in Crete's Amari Valley" Over the past eight years the speaker has visited villages in a remote part of central Crete, interviewing residents about healing lore and collecting plant specimens. Prof. Clark gave an account of her forays into traditional medicine in a richly bio-diverse region of Crete, renowned since antiquity for its healing herbs. Patricia Clark is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria. She holds degrees in Classics from the University of Victoria and the University of Washington, from which she received her Ph.D. A social historian working in the areas of family studies and ancient medicine, her interests have recently turned to the inter-relationships between landscape and culture.
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December 7, 2004
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Dr. Tasoula Vervenioti, Ph.D. from Athens Dr. Vervenioti received her Ph.D. in Modern Greek History from the Panteion University of Political and Social Sciences in Athens, Greece. From 1998-1999, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton University and from 1999-2000 was a Lecturer at the University of Crete in the Department of History and Anthropology. She is the author of The Woman of the Resistance: Women's Entry into Politics (1994) and, more recently, The Double Book: The Narration of Stamatia Barbatsi (2003), an oral testimony of the civil war with Dr.Vervenioti's analysis, which has been nominated for a state prize in Greece. This event was sponsored by the Center for Modern Greek Studies, and the departments of Women's Studies and Anthropology, SFSU. |
November 17, 2004
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Evdoxios Doxiadis, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, UC Berkeley This lecture discussed the ways in which women received property in the period from 1750-1850 (dowries, inheritance, etc.) - the extent to which we can talk about women being in control of their wealth, which changed significantly over their lifetimes - and the different types of property that women received (houses, land, movable goods, etc.). It stressed the local nature of such practices, and the remarkable diversity that can be seen during this time-period from region to region in Greece and the homogenizing role of the modern Greek state. |
September 23, 2004
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Harry Mark Petrakis From the Publisher (Southern Illinois University Press) : In his tenth novel, The Orchards of Ithaca, celebrated Chicago storyteller Harry Mark Petrakis enhances his vigorous naturalism with humor, charm, and revelation. From the street level vantage point of Orestes Panos, a prosperous restaurateur on the eve of his fiftieth year and the coming millennium, Petrakis personalizes humankind's epic struggle between the unresolved guilt and sins of our shared past and the potential of a still untainted future. Harry Mark Petrakis was a visiting Write-in-Residence at the Kazantzakis' Chair at SFSU in 1993. This event was co-sponsored by Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church
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September 21, 2004 |
Despina Carvela, Greek filmmaker Born in Athens, filmmaker Despina Carvela, studied English literature at Deree, the American College at Athens, and majored in Film Arts at the California College of Arts and Crafts. She has worked as an assistant director to Vassilis Maros and to Nikos Nikoloidis, well-known Greek film directors. Ms. Carvela has directed over 30 documentary films that feature portraits of contemporary Greek life and culture. "Litsa" was produced for the national Greek television series (ERT) entitled, "Women's Portraits." "It's Lovely" won the award for best Greek documentary at the Kalamata International Greek Festival. She has also directed and scripted 3 fiction films including "Two Days in an Island" which won a Thessaloniki Film Festival award for best drama. |
May 14, 2004
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Alexander Kitroeff, Associate Professor of History, Haverford College Haverford Professor Kitroeff tells a fascinating story of how Greeks and the international community have used, since the Olympic Games' revival in 1896, the symbols of ancient Greece for political, economic, and, occasionally, sporting purposes. Anyone who wants to understand the 2004 games and all the cultural imagery that will surround them, will find Wrestling with the Ancients necessary, as well as pleasurable, reading. Alexander Kitroeff was born in Athens, Greece and was educated in the United Kingdom where he received a B.A. in Politics at Warwick University in 1977, an M.A. in History at Keele University in 1979 and a D.Phil. in Modern History at Oxford University in 1984. His doctoral dissertation, completed at St. Antony's College, examined the history of the Greek diaspora in Egypt between the two world wars. Kitroeff was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Center for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies at Queens College CUNY between 1986-1989, Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University in 1987, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Temple University in 1989-1990 and Assistant Professor in the Department of History & the Onassis Center for Hellenic Studies at New York University between 1990-1996. In 1996 he began teaching at Haverford College, where he is presently Associate Professor of History.
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May 5, 2004
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Nanos Valaoritis, Professor Emeritus, Creative Writing, SFSU This event was co-sponsored by the Poetry Center, SFSU |
May 4, 2004
Video still: "A Step into History" - Nemea, 2004 |
Stephen Miller, Professor of Classical Archaeology, UC Berkeley "Ancient Nemea: A Contribution to the Olympic Movement" Professor Miller's lecture focused on the ancient stadium that he discovered at Nemea and the modem revival of the games in it. Those games are intended, in part, to give anyone and everyone a chance to experience something of ancient athletics and, at the same time, a sense of participation in the Olympic spirit. |
April 23, 2004
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Artemis Leontis, Adjunct Professor of Modern Greek, University of Michigan A little-known resource for developments in Asia Minor and Anatolia immediately preceding World War I, the Archive of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan is the source for Prof. Leontis’ latest research. The Archive includes papers and photos of classicist Francis W. Kelsey. He made four expeditions to the Eastern Mediterranean between 1919 and 1926. He visited and photographed the burned city of Smyrna in 1924, as well as Constantinople, Adana, Aintab, Patmos, and Athens. Prof. Leontis is the author of Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland (Cornell University Press, 1995), and Greece (Whereabouts Press, 1997). |
April 16, 2004
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Barbara McLauchlin, Professor of Classics, SFSU As a frequent public speaker, Barbara McLauchlin recently talked on such topics as "Their Ways Are Much Like Ours: Greeks and Others," and "Athens in the Fifth Century B.C." As staff field archaeologist, Professor McLauchlin has participated in the Corinth Excavations and also the digs at Ancient Nemea, among many others. Her writings are extensive, including such articles as "Temples, Tombs, and Treasure Hunts: Collecting in Antiquity," and "Classical Archaeology." Dr. McLauchlin directed many study programs in Greece. A lecturer, researcher, and writer, Professor Barbara McLauchlin was formerly the Chair of the Department of Classics as well as the Chair of the Department of World and Comparative Literature at San Francisco State University. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley where she received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archeology.
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March 5, 2004
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Anca Vlasopolos, Professor of English, Wayne State University Prof. Vlasopolos' moving memoir recounts a daughter’s recollections of a Greek-Jewish family in Romania and their multiple relocations from Eastern Europe to the United States in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Anca Vlasopolos is Professor and Head of Comparative Literature in Wayne State University's English Department. She specializes in comparative literature, feminist studies, and contemporary women's drama. Dr. Vlasopolos received her B.A. in English from Wayne State University in 1970, her M.A. in Comparative Literature in 1971 from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan in 1977. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Vlasopolos has published poetry, novels and a memoir. Her memoir No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement was published by Columbia University Press in 2000. Her mystery/police procedural set in Detroit, Missing Members, was published in 1990. Her essay "Where All the Lights Were Bright" was included in Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs by Michigan Writers ( Michigan State University Press, 2000). Ridgeway press published her poetry collections, Through the Straits, At Large, in 1997, and The Evidence of Spring, in 1989. Her scholarly work is voluminous, and is wide-ranging, including an article in Science Fiction Studies #30 (July 1983) on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
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February 23, 2004
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Zeese Papanikolas, Professor of English, San Francisco Art Institute Lecture and discussion of short stories by Helen Papanikolas, Small Bird Tell Me (Swallow Press). Zeese Papanikolas was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1942. He is the son of Nick Papanikolas and notable Greek-American author and historian Hellen Zeese Papanikolas. He attended Kenyon College and the University of Utah and received a B.A. in World Literature from San Francisco State University. He was a Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing during 1965-66 and subsequently received an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford. He is the author of Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas And The Ludlow Massacre ; Trickster In The Land Of Dreams; American Silence and, with Frank Bergon, edited Looking Far West, an anthology of writing on the American West. |
February 24, 2004 |
Dr. Susan Petrakis Dr. Petrakis lectured on the building and structure of the Parthenon during the Periclean period. A specialist on archaeology, Dr. Petrakis has held a number of teaching postions at Universities such as the University of Arizona and the University of Victoria. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. |
February 17, 2004 |
Professor Philip Stanley, Department of Classics, SFSU Phillip Stanley received an MA in Biblical Theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and another in Ancient Greek from the University of California. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in the areas of Greek History, Greek Archaeology, and Sumerian Studies. He has been a Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at San Francisco State University for over twenty years. During that time he has been involved in several overseas study programs and tours. He has twice served as the academic director for the SFSU Semester in Athens Program and once on the London Semester, and he excavated in Turkey as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1997, Dr. Stanley was the academic director for the Fall Semester program in Greece. |
December 4, 2003
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Gail Holst-Warhaft, Adjunct Professor of Modern Greek, Cornell University This lecture focused on the poetry of modern Greece as the main source of inspiration for Mikis Theodorakis' work. From Yiannis Ritsos to Odysseas Elytis, George Seferis, Kostas Varnalis, Angelos Sikelianos and Nikos Gatsos, Theodorakis set almost every major poet of Greece to music, creating a unique marriage between popular music and serious poetry. Gail Holst-Warhaft is a writer, musician and translator. She performed with Theodorakis in Greece in 1975 and 1978. Her books include Road to Rembetika, Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Greek Music, and Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Classics and Comparative Literature at Cornell University.
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September 16, 2003
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Eleni Bastea, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of New Mexico
Eleni Bastéa is an Associate Professor in Architecture at the University of New Mexico. She holds an undergraduate degree in art history from Bryn Mawr College, a Master's of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in history of architecture, also from UC Berkeley. She is the author of The Creation of Modern Athens: Planning the Myth (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), winner of the John D. Criticos Prize, and a finalist for the Sir Runciman Award. She is also the editor and a contributing author of the forthcoming book Memory and Architecture (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press).
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May 9, 2003
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The Honorable Dimitris Avramopoulos, former Mayor of Athens, Greece Mr. Avramopoulos studied Law and Political Science at the University of Athens and received his Masters degree in European Studies at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. He joined the Greek diplomatic corps in 1980 and served in a variety of distinguished posts. He became a special diplomatic advisor to the former Greek Prime Minister, Constantine Mitsotakis. He was elected mayor of Athens in 1995 and served in that capacity until the end of 2002. Mr. Avramopoulos is also the founder of the World Institute of Global and Cities' Diplomacy and the World Union of Olympic Cities. He is a member of numerous international organizations and has been the recipient of many prestigious awards and honors from many nations and institutions such as Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and The Vatican. Most recently he was a Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Politics at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. This event was sponsored by the Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA) |
April 16, 2003
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Steefenie Wicks This presentation featured a series of photographs developed from original plate negatives from the work of photographer Leonidas Pantotio. Pantotio was an unknown photographer who came to this country from Patras, Greece. When he left Ellis Island he adopted a new name, Leon Pantoti. In San Francisco he opened 'Photo Studio Patras' at 319 Third Street in the heart of "Greek Town." Ms. Wicks says: "In 1983 I was given a box of old broken glass plate negatives that had been found under the stairway of a building that was being torn down near the corner of Third and Folsom Street in the late 1970's. It was not until 1998 that I would take a closer, more curious look at them. Since then it has taken me over five years to discover the photographer, his community and to locate some of the relatives from these images that were taken over 80 years ago." This event was co-sponsored by the Hellenic American Professional Society.
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April 11, 2003
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Gonda Van Steen, Associate Professor of Modern Greek and Classics, University of Arizona Prof. Van Steen's talk deatl with the theatricalization of politics by the colonels in this period and the response of theater professionals active under the junta.
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December 4, 2002 |
Laurie Kain Hart, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Haverford College Professor Hart discussed her fieldwork in Northwest Greek Macedonia in Florina with an emphasis on the social history of its rural and provential-built environment. She is the author of Time, Religion, and Social Experience in Rural Greece, a Study of Local Religious Practice in the Southern Pelopennese (Roman and Littlefield, 1992). Her recent publications are concentrated on ethnicity, ethnic conflict; space and architecture in the Balkans.
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October 26, 2002 |
Georges Stassinakis, President of The Friends of Nikos Kazantzakis George Stassinakis gave an overview of the life and major publications of Nikos Kazantzakis. The video presented was produced by George Anemogiannis. The presentation was followed by a reception sponsored by the Greek Consulate of San Francisco.
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May 12, 2002
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Sophia Florakas-Petsalis Ms. Florakas-Petsalis presented a rich slide-show presentation featuring the early Greek immigrants in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in the early twentieth century. Sophia Florakas-Petsalis has a degree from McGill University in Montreal. She has lived in Greece and Nigeria, where she did research for her first book, The Silent Power, about Nigerian women. Ms. Petsalis has been an educator and a judge in Montreal. |
April 26, 2002 |
Yiorgos Anagnostou, Assistant Professor of Modern Greek, Department of Greek and Latin, Ohio State University Professor Anagnostou is an anthropologist who specializes in Greek American ethnicity. He holds a M.A. in cultural anthropology from Louisiana State University and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Anthropology, Comparative Studies and Modern Greek Studies from The Ohio State University. He is presently an assistant professor at the Modern Greek Program, Department of Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University. His research on Greek America has been published in scholarly journals as well as the Greek-American press. He currently is at work on a book-length manuscript on Greek cultural interfaces with American society. |
April 14, 2002
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Elizabeth Prodromou, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boston University The point of departure for Prodromou's talk was the fact that the persistence of acute violence and instability in international relations after the Cold War has contributed to a paradox in scholarly and policy responses designed to prevent or resolve communal conflict. Specifically, notwithstanding a rhetorical, if not practical, commitment to democracy, peace building, and global integration, scholars and policymakers have demonstrated an increasing preference towards partition as a preferred option in preventive action or post-conflict peace building in cases of communal violence. The case of Cyprus speaks directly to this paradox. Indeed, the current discussions between leaders of the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities on the island are occurring against the backdrop of a United Nations plan for a bizonal, bicommunal, federal Cyprus that is moving quickly towards full membership in the EU's first post-Cold War enlargement. Yet, concurrently, a political solution to the island's 28-year division following the Turkey's invasion in 1974 remains elusive; the government of Cyprus, led by President Glafkos Clerides, supports the UN plan, while Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, with Ankara's support, continues to demand a two-state solution. Against the above backdrop, Prodromou presented Cyprus as a critical case study for evaluating the merits of partition theory versus democratic federalism as competing solutions for building stable security environments in post-conflict conditions, particularly in regions of broad geo-strategic importance to global peace. Analysis of the Cyprus case proceeded in three parts. First, Prodromou summarized and critiqued the logic of partition theory, particularly in terms of the claim that partition arrangements lead to homogenous states that are, therefore, less prone to conflict and, consequently, more likely to democratize successfully. Second, constitutional federalism was explored in detail as an alternative to partition. In this sense, Prodromou's main argument was that a federal Cyprus must be supported by a Habermasian concept of democratic citizenship that balances the liberal, individual rights of political participation with the social and cultural rights of the group. By way of conclusion, Prodromou sketched some ideas for concrete steps towards the goal of building a democratic, federal Cyprus constituted by a nation of citizens. Prodromou suggested that EU and Cypriot leaders from all communities should consider, through programs of harmonization and devolution, two main areas of restructuring: first, the revision of pedagogical methods, textbooks, and curriculum, and second, the development of a rigorous regulatory environment for the mass media. In both cases, structural revisions are necessary to optimize the possibilities that a federal, democratic Cyprus can evolve in a manner that allows all citizens of Cyprus, regardless of communal identity, to participate in public life in ways that bring new authorship to the meaning of the nation in Cyprus in the 21st century. Dr. Elizabeth Prodromou is the Associate Director of the Institute on Religion and World Affairs at Boston University, where she also teaches in the Department of International Relations. Dr. Prodromou holds a Ph.D. in political science from the M.I.T. She has taught at Princeton, Harvard and Tufts Universities. Dr. Prodromou is a regional expert on Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. Her scholarship and policy work focuses on religion and international relations, nationalism and conflict resolution, democracy and religious change, culture and international security. She is active in public policy, and has worked with numerous government, and international institutions. Dr. Prodromou is also Executive Director at the Cambridge Foundation for Peace, and Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University in the Kennedy School of Government. This event was co-sponsored by the Modern Greek Studies Foundation
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February 24-25, 2002
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Dimitris Tziovas, Professor of Modern Greek Studies and Director of the Center for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham (UK) These lectures were sponsored by the Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA)
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November 8, 2001
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Sophia Constantinou, Director & Anna Maria Vavoukis, Producer Exploring national identity and immigrant identity through the bittersweet memories and tragic history of the fractured island of Cyprus. this one-hour documentary, Divided Loyalties, traces the stories of the displaced people of Cyprus, Greek-Cypriot & Turkish-Cypriot, towards an understanding of the importance of the place we call home. The world premiere of Divided Loyalties at the 44th San Francisco International Film Festival garnered the top honor of Golden Gate Award at the festival. Sophia Constantinou's award winning films "Divided Loyalties", "Between the Lines", "Impact Zone" and "Trans" have shown around the globe in festivals, museums and on TV. Working as a Director and Director of Photography in San Francisco independent and commercial film industry, she has photographed in film and video for commercial clients; for PBS's national television and for KQED local public television; for non-profit clients such as the Film Arts Foundation, the Jewish Film Festival, CAL Welfare to Work; and independent features and shorts. A graduate of the UC Berkeley Film Department, Constantinou teaches filmmaking, cinematography and media literacy throughout the Bay Area.
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November 2, 2001
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Peter Bien, Professor Emeritus, Dartmouth College This talk focused on theological interpretation of the Christ figure in The Last Temptation of Christ, showing how Kazantzakis uses traditional Biblical materials for his own purposes. Peter Bien is Professor of English and the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing Emeritus at Dartmouth. His major translations include Kazantzakis's Report to Greco and The Last Temptation of Christ as well as Stratis Myrivilis's Life in the Tomb. He has also co-edited with Darren Middleton, God's Struggler: Religion in the Writings of Nikos Kazantzakis. |
April 19, 2001
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Dr. Nicholas Samaras, Greek American Poet In the forward to Nicholas Samaras's first volume, Hands of the Saddlemaker, James Dickey writes: "The most engaging quality of his work is his metaphysical internationalism, the note of the eternal exile who yet finds remarkable and life-enhancing particularities in the countries through which he passes." Hands of the Saddlemaker (1992), received the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His second collection is Survivors of the Moving Earth (1998). His individual poems have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, Kenyon Review, etc. A WEEKEND IN GREECE On the far edge of August, I flew in to say goodbye, found your face's dark beauty. You took me to a hotel you I'd leave in the morning. So, we saw each other. But, oh, we were a gold moon, large as a Byzantine coin, chafed Out at midnight, harbor wind choreographed seagulls in flight. Across the white tablecloth, our hands touched briefly. and newly light, mine filled with the breeze AMPHILOHIOS from Hands of the Saddlemaker (1992) This is the first thing you think of. Because you have never felt anything as For three days, he will love you and ignore you-- Before you are ready to give THE DIVORCE CLERK No other office is as ordered, as immaculate-- where the office mailman drops his burden of marriage. Aligning my lips, I breathe in and I keep no radio, no photographs--touch only The shreds of sacrament flow from my hands. no business. With each tired envelope, I petition God Dr. Samaras is from Woburn, Massachusetts, but he has also lived in New York, Thessaloniki, Greece, and other parts of Europe and America. He recently edited the book, To the Country of that Spirit: Selected Poems & Essays of Alexandros Gialas (a.k.a. G. Verites), and wrote the "Introduction" to the collection, published in Greece (1998). Having received degrees from the University of Denver (Ph.D., 1994) and Columbia University (MFA, 1985), Dr. Samaras has taught at the University of Denver (1989-1993) and at Columbia University and has been the recipient of numerous writing awards, such as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Poetry Fellowship (1997-98). Dr. Samaras currently teaches at Eckerd College in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. This event was co-sponsored by the Department of English, SFSU |
February 23, 2001
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Stathis Kalyvas, Associate Professor of Politics, University of Chicago In this lecture Prof. Stathis Kalyvas discussed his attempts to explore the tremendous variation in violence across similar social landscapes in the context of the Greek Civil War. His work examines new research and combines both oral histories and written sources from both southern and northern Greece. Professor Kalyvas is the author of The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (1996), recipient of the J. David Greenstone Prize and is currently working on a book manuscript, "The Logic of Violence in Civil War." He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1993 and has taught in the Political Science departments at Ohio State University and New York University. This event was co-sponsored by the Department of History |
November 16, 2000 |
Dr. Penelope Papailias, College year at Athens A talk centering on Yiorgos Yiannis Elias Mantas, a migrant worker who lived in California between 1902 and 1909, working in a cement factory in Napa Junction and later as a pushcart-peddler of fruits and vegetables in Los Angeles. Mantas returned in 1922 to his native Arcadia, where he died in 1966. We do not know much about how the returned migrants--or, to use the more evocative Gringlish term, Brooklides, narrated memories of 'America' in the course of everyday life. Dr. Papailias considers how Mantas used his experiences of migrant labor to reflect on working-class life and the meaning of 'patriotis' in the wake of the civil war, which claimed the lives of his three sons. Penelope Papailias received her doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan in October 2000. Her dissertation, “Genres of Recollection: Histories, Testimonies and the Personal Archive in Contemporary Greece” examines the politics of cultural memory in Greek society in the post-Cold War period through an analysis of the practices and poetics involved in the documentation of personal experience. She lives in Greece, where she teaches anthropology at College Year in Athens.
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November 5, 2000
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Dr. Marianna Spanaki, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek, University of Birmingham (UK) Born in Crete, Dr. Spanaki holds a doctorate in cultural history and literary studies. She teaches Modern Greek Studies and culture for the University of Birmingham, Britain at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies where she heads the Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Seminar. She is currently working on contemporary women and Greek culture, Greek philology, translation theory and issues of discourse and society. |
December 2, 1999
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Theodore Bogdanos, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature, San Jose State University In his talk, Professor Bogdanos illustrated how drama began to flourish in Byzantine culture.
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November 11, 1999
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Zeese Papanikolas, Professor of English, San Francisco Art Institute The first wave of Greek immigrants to the United States in the years before World War One were, in a sense, a silent generation. With little education, little time or inclination to write diaries and memoirs after exhausting labor in mines and factories and on railroad gangs, their story was told, if at all, in the statistics kept by government agencies and the reports of social reformers. In this talk Zeese Papanikolas presented slides of Greek immigrant laborers to demonstrate how a careful reading of these photographs can begin to restore the missing voices of this generation of Greek immigrants. Zeese Papanikolas is a professor in the Liberal Arts Department at the San Francisco Art Institute. His research focuses on the American West, labor and immigration. He is the author of Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre, the biography of a Greek-American organizer for the United Mine Workers killed in the violent Colorado coal strike of 1913-14. His most recent book, Trickster in the Land of Dreams, is a study of myths of utopia and technology in the American West.
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May 14, 1999
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Panagiotis Roilos, Assistant Professor of Modern Greek, Ohio State University This lecture focused on the "Image of Byzantium in Kazantzakis' Work" drawing on Kazantzakis' prose and plays such as Report to Greco and Julian the Apostate. Panagiotis Roilos was born and raised in Greece. He studied at the University of Athens (B.A./Ptychion in Classics, Byzantine and Modern Greek Literature, 1991; class valedictorian) and Harvard University (Ph.D. in Modern Greek Studies, 1999). Before joining the Harvard faculty, he was Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University in the Department of Greek and Latin (1998-2000). He has written on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Greek literature and society, oral poetics, metaphor and ritual, Byzantine literature (11th-15th c.), premodern and modern literary theory, and comparative poetics. Professor Roilos is the author of the books C. P. Cavafy: The Economics of Desire (University of Illinois Press, 2007), Amphoteroglossia: A Poetics of the Twelfth-Century Medieval Greek Novel (Harvard University Press, 2005), and Towards a Ritual Poetics (2003; co-author with D. Yatromanolakis). Greek edition of the book, trans. by Manos Skouras and with a preface by Marcel Detienne entitled For an Anthropological Approach, 2005). His major publications include also the book Greek Ritual Poetics (co-editor; Harvard University Press, 2005). |
April 20, 1999
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Dr. Maria Mavroudi Fluent in both classical Greek and Arabic, Dr. Maria Mavroudi is a history professor at University of California, Berkeley. After earning her Philology degree from the University of Thessaloniki in Greece, Dr. Mavroudi earned her PhD in Byzantine Studies from Harvard University. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, author of A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources, and researches the recycling of the ancient tradition between Byzantium and Islam; Byzantine intellectual history; survival and transformation of Byzantine culture after 1453, along with other various topics.
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March 14, 1999
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Giorgos Syrimis, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University
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March 8 & 9, 1999
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Peter Bien, Professor of English, Dartmouth College Professor Peter Bien, Dartmouth College, presented two lectures to the Kazantzakis Chair. Professor Bien's first presentation was on "Kazantzakis's Travel Writing" In his second lecture, "Kazantzakis's Religious Vision," Professor Bien placed the author's religiosity in the context of "process theology" to show that Kazantzakis was perhaps too "modern" in his thinking for his Orthodox critics. Professor Bien is the third person of letters to visit and lecture at San Francisco State under the auspices of the Kazantzakis Chair. Professor Kimon Friar and Greek American writer Harry Mark Petrakis have visited in this capacity in the past. A distinguished scholar and translator of the work of Nikos Kazantzakis and other Modern Greek writers, Professor Bien is the author of Kazantzakis and the Linguistic Revolution in Greek Literature (1972) and Kazantzakis' Report to Greco and The Last Temptation of Christ as well as Statis Myrivilis' Life in the Tomb. He is also a major contributor to Greek Today, a recently published textbook on Modern Greek language (2004), and A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900-2000, a major anthology of Modern Greek poetry (2004). Known as a pioneer in the field of Modern Greek Studies, Professor Bien has served as a founding member and President of the Modern Greek Studies Association and has been a long-standing Editor of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies.
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February 19, 1999
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Marios Byron Raizis, Professor of English, University of Athens Professor Raizis' lecture focused on drawing parallels between Solomos' poetics and that of his British Romantic counterparts, e.g., Percy Shelley and Lord George Byron. A graduate of Purdue University (M.Sc.) and of New York University (Ph.D.), Professor Marios-Byron Raizis joined the Faculty of English Studies at the University of Athens in 1978 and attained the status of Full Professor of English Literature and the ex-officio Head of the Faculty. His research and publications focus primarily on the area of English Metaphysical and Romantic poetry, as well as in comparative literary studies of Greek and English letters; he has also studied and translated modern Greek poetry into English. A distinguished Byron scholar, M. B. Raizis has been the President of the Greek Byron Society since 1988, and also holds the Co-Presidency of the International Byron Society, an honorary lifetime office.
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October 2, 1998
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Gregory Jusdanis, Professor of Modern Greek, Ohio State University Professor Gregory Jusdanis, Ohio State University, a specialist on Modern Greek literature and past recipient of a Guggenheim award, launched the first of a series of lectures on the subject of the Hellenic diaspora by invited scholars to the Center for Modern Greek Studies. Professor Jusdanis's talk addressed key issues concerning Greek Americans, the Hellenic diaspora and globalization. Professor Jusdanis is the author of two books, The Poetics of Cavafy: Textuality, Eroticism and History and Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture: Inventing National Literature, as well as a number of articles on the subject of the diaspora and multiculturalism. |
May 13, 1998 |
Pamela Vaughn, Professor of Classics, SFSU Pamela Vaughn was educated at St. Olaf College and received her Ph.D., from the University of California at Berkeley, in 1988. She has served on the faculties of the California State University at Fresno and, since 1993, at San Francisco State University, where she is associate professor and chair of the Department of Classics and of the Department of Comparative and World Literature. This event was co-sponsored by the Modern Greek Studies Foundation |
March 13, 1998
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Stephen Miller, Professor of Classical Archaeology, UC Berkeley Since 1973, UC Berkeley Classics Professor Steven Miller has directed an excavation project in Nemea, Greece, where ancient Greek Olympic events took place. Miller was hired by the UC Berkeley classics department in 1973 to take on and coordinate projects in Nemea for graduate students in the department's doctorate program. For more than 25 years, Miller and a team of graduate students have traveled to Nemea and excavated the area to learn more about the culture and attitudes surrounding the ancient events. This event was co-sponsored by the Modern Greek Studies Foundation |
February 23, 1998 |
