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Cultural Politics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
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7/14/11
Past Events:
The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
Seminar on Modern Greek Literature and Culture
November 16, 7:00 p.m., Room 110, Barker Center
"'Disturbing the Airwaves': Writing about Greece under Nazi Occupation"
Maria Tatar (Harvard University).
November 15, 4:00 p.m., Woodberry Poetry Room, Lamont Library.
"Celebrating this Year's Nobel Prize in Literature: Tranströmer across Languages"
MODERN GREEK LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Rika Lesser, Ursula Lindqvist (Harvard University), Vasilis Papageorgiou
(Linnaeus University), and Judith Ryan (Harvard University).
Cosponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, The
Scandinavian Studies Program, and Rethinking Translation.
November 10, 2011, 6:00-8:00 p.m., 133 Barker Center
"'Listen, all of you, both Franks and Romans': The Narrator in the Chronicle of
Morea"Teresa Shawcross, Assistant Professor in Medieval European and Mediterranean
History, Amherst and Mt. Holyoke Colleges
February 3, 2011, 6:00-8:00 p.m., 133 Barker Center
"Formal and Vernacular Architecture in the Aegean Archipelago: Stuart
and Revett, Thomas Hope and Alexandros Papadiamantis"Dean Constantin Michaelides, Washington University in St. Louis
October 28, 2010, 4:00-6:00 p.m., 133 Barker
"Hellenism, Primitivism and Modernist Performance"*
Dr. Olga Taxidou, University of Edinburgh
*Note: This lecture is sponsored by the University Seminars Program of the
Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA)
Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 6:30 p.m.
133 Barker, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138
This is open to the public.
"On Transnational Literacy or, Notes from a Modern Poetics"
Maria Koundoura
Associate Professor at Emerson College
Friday, April 23, 2010, 6:00 p.m.
110 Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 (For a map please visit this link: http://map.harvard.edu/
"The New Acropolis Museum: Its Exhibits and Architecture"
presented by its Director, Professor Demetrios Pandermalis
Reception to follow in Ticknor Lounge
Download the flyer here.The Lecture is co-sponsored by the George Seferis Chair of Modern Greek Studies,
Harvard University, The Federation of Hellenic American Societies of New England, and the Press & Communication Office & Consulate General of Greece in Boston
This is open to the public.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 6:00 p.m.
133 Barker, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138
This is open to the public.
"(Dis)continuities in Ethnic Identification and Linguistic Behavior: Greek Speakers in Northeast Turkey"
Pietro Bortone
Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago. Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Berlin, Germany (from September 2010)
February 24, 2010, 6:00 p.m.
133 Barker, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138
This is open to the public.
"Greece's 'Great Idea' & the Politics of Cultural Nationalism in the 1850s"
Alexander Kitroeff
Associate Professor of History, Haverford College
October 20, 2009, 6:00 p.m., Barker 133
"Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke to Read Her Poetry at Harvard"
Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke was born in Athens in 1939. She studied foreign languages and literature at the Universities of Nice, Athens, and Geneva. In 1962 she was awarded the First Prize for Poetry of the City of Geneva. She received two grants from the Ford Foundation (1972, 1975), as well as the Greek National Prize for Poetry (1985) and the Greek Academy’s Poetry Prize (2000). She attended the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1974-75 and was a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at Harvard, Utah, and San Francisco State Universities in 1982, as well as a Fellow at the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton in 1987. She has published fourteen books of poetry as well as four collected volumes. She is fluent in English, French, and Russian and is an acclaimed translator of Seamus Heaney and Alexander Pushkin, among others. Her work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, Serbian, Dutch, Bulgarian, Hebrew, and English.
September 29, 2009. 6:30 p.m., 133 Barker Center
"Foucault in Athens"James D. Faubion is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the
Department of Anthropology at Rice University. His publications
include work on the design of anthropological research, religion and
violence, contemporary realizations of kinship, social and cultural
thought, the sociocultural context of literary production, and
comparative ethics. He is the editor of two of the three volumes of
Essential Works of Michel Foucault and author of Modern Greek
Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism.
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University: Research Seminar on Cultural Politics
April 7, 2011, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge St., Room K401
This is open to the public."Literary Governance and Global Chinese Literature"
Jing Tsu, Associate Professor, Chinese Literature, Yale University
April 4, 2011, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge St., Room S250
This is open to the public."Image of the Black in Western Art"
Gates, Henry Louis
Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., University Professor; Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois
Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University
March 31, 2011, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge St., Room K401
This is open to the public."A Very Quarrelsome Man: Cultural Politics of Dirt, Locally Embedded Publics and a So-Called Leader of the Free World"
Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, The Johns Hopkins University.
March 3, 2011, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge St., Room K401
This is open to the public."On the future of Anthropology: Financial, Political, and Ethical Challenges in a Rapidly Changing Environment"
Alessandro Duranti, Professor of Anthropology, and Dean of Social Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles.
February 15, 2011, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge St., Room K401
This is open to the public."Royal Women and Pastoral Architecture in Early Modern France"
Meredith Martin, Assistant Professor of Art History, Wellesley College.
September 20, 2010, 11:15 am - 12:30 pm
CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge St., Room K354"Byron to D'Annunzio: From Liberalism to Fascism in National Poetry, 1815-1920"
David Aberbach, Professor of Jewish Studies, McGill University
Wednesday, May 5, 2010, 6:00 p.m.
K262 (Bowie-Vernon Room), CGIS Knafel Building,
1737 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138This is open to the public.
"The Imminent End of War: 1750-2010"
David Bell, Professor of History, Princeton University.
Thursday, April 29, 2010, 6:00 p.m.
K262 (Bowie-Vernon Room), CGIS Knafel Building,
1737 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138This is open to the public.
"Créolité for Everybody"Haun Saussy, Bird White Housum Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University
Tuesday, March 30, 6:00 p.m.
K262 (Bowie-Vernon Room), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138This is open to the public.
"Civil War: An Essentially Contested Concept?"David Armitage, Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History, Harvard University
Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 6:00 p.m.
CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge St., Bowie-Vernon Room (K262)This is open to the public.
"Artistic Primitivism and the Emergence of Indigenous Modernisms: Western
Discourse, Global Diaspora"Ruth Phillips
William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies. Professor of
Art History, School for Studies in Art and Culture, and Canada Research Chair in
Modern Culture, Carleton University, Ottawa.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009, 6:00 pm
K262 (Bowie-Vernon Room), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge St.
"Global Religion and the Post-Secular Challenge: American and European
Perspectives"
Hent de Vries
Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Humanities Center, The Johns Hopkins
UniversityFor further information about this Seminar, please contact the chairs Panagiotis
Roilos (roilos@fas.harvard.edu) or Dimitrios Yatromanolakis
(yatroman@fas.harvard.edu).
Monday, November 16, 2009, 5:30 pm
Weatherhead Center, S354, CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge St.
"From the Top: Government Sponsored Creativity"Doris Sommer, Ira Jewell Williams, Jr., Professor of Romance Languages and
Literatures and in African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Seminar chairs: Panagiotis Roilos (roilos@fas.harvard.edu) and Dimitrios
Yatromanolakis (yatroman@fas.harvard.edu).
The Twenty-Third Nicholas E. Christopher Memorial Lecture
Friday, December 4, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
Harvard Hall 202
Elizabeth Jeffreys
Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Literature,
Emerita, University of Oxford
Digenes Akrites and Late Byzantine Verse Narrative
Download the Twenty-Third Nicholas E. Christopher Memorial Lecture Invitation:![]()

Engraving: Pierre-François Godart de Beauchamps. Les amours d’Ismene et d’Ismenias, 1743.
Houghton Library (Harvard). Typ 715.43.374.
The Second Biennial International Conference in Modern Greek Studies
“Byzantine and Early Modern Greek Fictional Writing”
and
The 23rd Nicholas E. Christopher Memorial Lecture
in Modern Greek Studies
December 4-5, 2009
Harvard Hall 202
Nicholas E. Christopher Memorial Lecture Archive
Second Biennial International Conference
Conference on Byzantine and Early Modern Greek Fictional Writing
December 4-5, 2009, Harvard Hall 202
PROGRAM
Friday, December 4
11:00-12:45: Opening Remarks
Panagiotis Roilos, Professor of Modern Greek Studies and of Comparative Literature, Director of the Modern Greek Studies Program, Harvard University
John Duffy, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Philology and Literature, Chair, Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Jan Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Director, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University
Jeffrey Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture, Chair, The Medieval Studies Committee, Harvard University
Fictional Narratives across Genres
Panel Chair: John Duffy, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Philology and Literature, Chair, Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Thomas Hägg, Professor Emeritus, Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway
Fiction and Factography in the Life of St. Antony
Paul Magdalino, Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Byzantine History, Emeritus, University of St. Andrews
Apocryphal Narrative: Patterns of Fiction in Byzantine Prophetic and Patriographic Literature
Paolo Cesaretti, Professor of Byzantine Studies, University of Bergamo
The Exegete as a Story-teller: The Dawn of Humankind according to Eustathios of Thessalonike
Lunch Break
14:30-16:15: Narrative Strategies and Discursive Forms
Panel Chair: Jan Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Director, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University
Michael Jeffreys, Professor Emeritus of Modern Greek, University of Sydney ( -2000), Oxford University and King's College London
Three Forms of Byzantine and Modern Greek Oral Narrative and Their Written Reflections: Unrhymed, Rhymed, and Tragoudia
Anthony Kaldellis, Professor of Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University
Philosophy and the Rise of Literary Fiction in Byzantium
Niels Gaul, Associate Professor, Director of the Center for Hellenic Traditions,
Central European University, Budapest
Dialogic Constructions of Fictitious Worlds and Literary “Realitie”’: Late Byzantine Dialogues and Mimesis
Friday, December 4
18:30: The Twenty-Third Nicholas Christopher Memorial Lecture in Modern Greek Studies
Elizabeth Jeffreys, Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Literature, Emerita, University of Oxford
“The Afterlife of Digenis Akritis”
20:00: Reception in Ticknor Lounge
Saturday, December 5
11:00-12:45: Flights of Imagination: Discursive and Visual
Representations
Panel Chair: Jeffrey Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture, Chair, The Medieval Studies Committee, Harvard University
Carolina Cupane, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Other Worlds, Other Voices: Form and Function of the Marvelous in LateByzantine Fiction
Ioli Kalavrezou, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History of Art, Harvard University
The Marvelous Flight of Alexander in Byzantium
Massimo Peri, Professor of Modern Greek Literature, University of Padova
The Four-color Tradition in Early Demotic Greek Poetry
Lunch Break
14:30-16:15: Conceptualizing Genres
Panel Chair: Albert Henrichs, Eliot Professor of Greek Literature, Harvard University
Ulrich Moennig, Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Philology, University of Hamburg
Literary Genres and Mixture of Generic Features
Roderick Beaton, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History,
Language and Literature, King's College London
Hopeful Monsters or Living Fossils? The Komnenian Novels and Their Medieval and Modern Reception
Panagiotis Roilos, Professor of Modern Greek Studies and of Comparative Literature, Director of the Modern Greek Studies Program, Harvard University
Toward a Historical Anthropology of Byzantine Fictional Writing
The conference is co-sponsored by the Medieval Studies Committee and
the Department of the Classics.
