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Past Lectures and Colloquia

A lecture series program was inaugurated in 1996. This program supports two to three lectures a year on topics of Modern Greek literature, history and culture. More recent and upcoming events are listed on our News page.

2012

  • Kostis Kourelis, (Archaeologist) 25 October 2012, "Radical Byzantium: Modernism and the Corinth Excavations"
  • Nikolaos Panou, (Princeton University) 20 March 2012, "Politics of the Imaginary:
    Power and Propaganda in Byzantium"
  • Susan Heuck Allen, (Brown University) 18 April 2012, "Archaeologists at War: From Relief to Reconnaissance with the OSS in World War II Greece"
  • C.P. Cavafy in Music: A Recital of Songs and Reflections, 24 April 2012, Alexandra Gravas, mezzo soprano; Dr. Pantelis Polychronidis, pianist; Dr. Vassilis Lambropoulos, speaker
  • A Crisis Examined: Reflections on Greece's options on the eve of the general elections, 2 May 2012, Elias Papaioannou (Harvard University); Kostis Kornetis (Brown University); Stylianos Michalopoulos (Brown University); Cornel Ban (Brown University)

2011

  • Dimitris Kousouris, (Princeton University) 2 March 2011, "The purge of wartime collaborators in Greece (1944-1950): rehabilitating state authority in post-World War II Europe"
  • Paris Papamichos, (University of Crete) 14 April 2011, "Living together in late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Salonica. Greeks, Jews and the transformation of middle-class sociability, 1870-1922"
  • Panel Discussion on the Greek Crisis: Social and Political Aspects-Global Implications
    Cornel Ban (Brown University); Elias Dinas (Oxford University); Sakis Gekas (York University); Nikos Skoutaris (Maastricht University); Vassilis Tzeveleko (Hull University)
    17 October 2011 (Watson Institute report: Analyzing Crisis as Greece Goes on Strike)
  • Emily Greenwood (Yale University) 17 November 2011, "Walcott's Homer and Debates in Black Classicism"
  • Georgia Gotsi (University of Patras, Greece) 29 November, 2011, "Beyond 'Home Identity?' Immigrant Voices in Contemporary Greek Fiction"

2010

  • George Katsiaficas, (Wentworth Institute of Technology) 24 March 2010, "Rethinking Samuel Huntington's "Third Wave"
  • Dionysis Goutsos, (University of Athens; Senior Visiting Scholar, Alexander S. Onassis Public Foundation, USA) 7 April 2010, "Studying Aphasia Through Specialized Corpora"
  • Peter Jeffreys, (Suffolk University) 21 April 2010, "Friends at a Slight Angle: The E.M. Forster-C.P. Cavafy Letters"
  • Elias Maglinis, (Author) 2 November 2010, "My Father Bleeds History: Writing about Memory and Trauma" - a reading of excerpts from the author's novella Interrogation (2008)
  • Hercules Millas, (Author) 17 November 2010, "History Teaching and the Formation of National Identity: The Greek and Turkish Cases Compared"
  • Alexis Rappas, (Visiting Scholar in Classics, Brown University) 1 December 2010, "The Moslem Bride, The Jewish Gambler and the Orthodox Priest: Intercommunal Sociability in an Italian Colony"

2009

  • Maria Couroucli, (CNRS; University of Paris X-Nanterre, France
    Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies Princeton University, 8 April 2009, “Sharing Nostalgia in Istanbul : Pilgrims on St . George's Sanctuary on Princes Island”
  • Elsa Korneti, Poetry reading, 15 April 2009
  • Gregory Jusdanis, (Ohio State University) 24 September 2009, "Duty and Desire: Friendship from Homer to Kazantzakis"
  • Alexis Rappas, (Post-Doctoral Fellow in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University) 4 November 2009, "Greeks Under European Colonial Rule: The Practical Significance of National Allegiance and Imperial Loyalty"
  • Alan L. Boegehold, (Professor Emeritus of Classics, Brown University) 19 November 2009, "An Evening with Alan L Boegehold and C.P. Cavafy"

2008

  • Maria Koundoura (Emerson College) 25 February 2008, "Mapping the Real in Greece"
  • Georgios Antoniou (Yale University) 17 March 2008, The Commemoration of Civil Wars in 20th Century Europe: Contextualizing the Greek Civil War Memories"
  • Iason Athanasiadis (Freelance photographer and Nieman Fellow at Harvard University) 18 April 2008, "Real and Imagined: The Middle East's Disappearing Hellenes"
  • Amanda Michalopoulou (Recipient of the 2007 National Endowment for the Arts International Literature Award) 22 April 2008, reading from her collection of short stories "I'd like"
  • Alexis Stamatis (Recipient of the 2007 National Endowment for the Arts International Literature Award) 8 October 2008, reading from his novel “American Fugue”
  • Greece and Spain, Parallel Histories at the Margins of Europe. An Interdisciplinary Conference, 5 November 2008
  • Elsa Amanatidou (Brown University) 21 November 2008, “Incorporating Culture in the MFL curriculum: an integrative approach”
  • Kostis Kornetis (Brown University) 8 December 2008, “Teaching with Technology: integrating video in the History Lesson”

2007

  • Vassilis Lambropoulos (University of Michigan) 27 February 2007, "Greek American Accents"; 1 March 2007, "Humanism between Hubris and Heroism
  • Conference: 20 April 2007, Balkan Literature of Dissent

2006

  • Franklin L. Hess (University of Iowa) 9 March 2006, "Violence, Narrative and the Critique of the Enlightenment in the Films of Theodoros Angelopoulos and Emir Kusturica"
  • Vassilis Colonas (University of Thessaly) 20 April 2006, "Thessaloniki Before And After The Fire of 1917"; 22 April 2006, "Urban Space in Cavafy's Poetry"
  • Gregory Jusdanis (Ohio State University) 27 April 2006, "Does Greek Speak the Language of World Literature?"
  • Dr. Maria Kaliambou (Princeton University) 29 November 2006, "Greek Popular Books: The Dialogue between Oral and Written Literature"

2005

  • Panos Karnezis 6 April 2005, "An evening with Panos Karnezis: a reading from his novel The Maze"
  • Peter Bien (Brown University) 22 March 2005, "Kazantzakis's Religious Philosophy"
  • Georges Prevelakis (Tufts University) 25 February 2005, "Diaspora and Nation-State: A Greek-Jewish Comparison"

2004

  • Stathis Kalyvas (Yale University) 8 November 2004, "Occupation, Violence, and Civil War in Greece: A Micro-Perspective"
  • Michael Paschalis (University of Crete) 21 October 2004, "The Greek Historical Novel (1850-1880), Classical Antiquity and Walter Scott"
  • Elizabeth Prodromou (Boston University) 10 March 2004, "From Secularism to Pluralism in Turkey: Possibilities for the Sustainability of the Greek Orthodox Minority"
  • Yorgos Kalogeras (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Visiting Scholar sponsored by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation University Seminars Program)
    1. 6 April 2004, "Contact Zones and Transition Statements: The Literary Cycles of Greek American Literature"
    2. 7 April 2004, "Hellenic Diaspora, Greek Immigrants and Americans of Hellenic Descent: Understanding Turn-of -the-Century Greek Immigration to the U.S.A."
    3. 8 April 2004, "Translating Ethnicity from Fiction to Film: Albert Isaac Bezzerides"
  • Eleni Bastea (The University of New Mexico) 14 April 2004, "Oh, The figs of Smyrna" Memories of the Garden in the Accounts of the Greek Orthodox Refugees from Anatolia
  • Michalis Paschalis (Department of Philology, University of Crete, Visiting Scholar sponsored by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation University Seminars Program) 21 October 2004, "The Greek Historical Novel (1850-1880), Classical Antiquity and Walter Scott"
  • Stathis Kalyvas (Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science, Yale University) 8 November, "Occupation, Violence, and Civil War in Greece: A Micro-Perspective"

2003

  • The Honorable Dimitri Avramopoulos (Visiting Scholar sponsored by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation University Seminars Program) April 2003, "Cities and International Diplomacy"
  • Eri Stavropoulou (University of Athens) October 2003, "The Image of America in 19th century Greek literature: Between Utopia and the Exotic"
  • Elias Bantekas (Westminster University) November 2003, "International Criminal Justice and the Reconstruction of the Balkans"

2002

  • David Connolly (Visiting Fellow in Modern Greek Studies, St. Cross College, Oxford) December 2001, "The Poetry of Song: Popular Musical Settings of Modern Greek Poetry"
  • Gonda Van Steen (University of Arizona-Tuscon) November 2001, "Power play and tyrannicide in stage revivals of Aeschylus' Oresteia under the Greek military dictatorship, 1967-1974"
  • Georgios Antoniou (Research Student, European University Institute, Florence, Italy) October 2001, "Who belongs to the Nation: In search of the enemy in the Greek forties"
  • Peter Mackridge (St. Cross College, Oxford, Senior Visiting Fellow, Onassis Foundation, USA) September 2002, "National tradition as national difference in Modern Greek culture"
  • Peter Mackridge (St. Cross College, Oxford), April, "Diglossia and the Separation of Discourses in Greek Culture."
  • Workshop, April 25-26: "Western Visions and the Construction of Identities in Southeast Europe" a workshop on the Late Ottoman Empire and the Balkans.

2000

  • Conference: 5-6 May 2000, "Memory, Identity, Geopolitics: A Conference on the Eastern Mediterranean."
  • Roderick Beaton (King's College, London), April, "The Exemplary Modernism of George Seferis."
  • Mark Mazower (Birkbeck College, University of London, and Princeton University), March, "Before Nationalism: Religion in the Balkans, 1500-1800"
  • Thodoros Couloubis (Senior Visiting Fellow, Onassis Foundation, USA), November, "The Metamorphosis of Greece: Domestic and Foreign Policy Dimensions"

1999

  • Dimitris L. Avramopoulos, Mayor of Athens, November, "The Role of Cities in the Third Millennium."
  • Dora Bakoyannis, Member of the Greek Parliament, November, "The Balkans: Powder Keg or Deposit of Errors?" Inaugural Lecture of the Watson Institute for International Studies' Director's Seminar Series: Self-Determination in International Politics.
  • Polimeris Voglis (Princeton University), December, "The State in a State of Emergency: Greece in Civil War."

1998

  • Socrates Petmezas (Department of History, University of Crete, Rethymnon), February, "The Mutation of the Greek Intellectual Scene in the 1840s and 1850s: From Constitutional to Romantic Nationalism."
  • David Ricks (Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, King's College London), April, "Kavafy's Alexandrianism and its English Language Inheritors."
  • Philip Carabott (Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, King's College London), April, "Minorities and the State: The Case of the Slavo-Macedonians in Inter-War Greece."
  • Colloquium: November, "Greeks and their Topoi: 18th-20th Century Diasporas."

1997

  • Patricia Storace (New York City), April: Dinner with Persephone Book Reading.
  • Platon Mavromoustakos (Department of Theatre Studies, National University of Athens), April: "Ancient Greek Drama on Modern Greek Stage."
  • John Theofanis Papadimitriou (Department of Classics, National University of Athens), November: "The Emergence of a Seminal Anti-Hero: From Aesop to the Picaresque Novel and Beyond."
  • Maria Todorova (Department of History, University of Florida), December: "Do Identities Exist and Who Has Them? Some Reflections on Balkan Identities."

1996

  • Anna Stavrakopoulou (Harvard University), November: "The Life and Times of Popular Performing Artists: Oral Autobiographies of Karaghiozis."