Seminars

In this seminar poet and architect Phoebe Giannisi revisits her poetic research on the goat-herding practices of the Vlachs, a nomadic people of the Southern Balkans, that informed her groundbreaking poetry collection Chimera (New Directions: 2024, translated from the Greek by Brian Sneeden). She will read her poetry and present how her practice is by definition chimeric, drawing on field recordings, state archives, and ancient texts. She will also discuss how this work might be presented as part of an upcoming exhibition of public humanities projects in Greece.

What is the role of the book critic in contemporary Greece? Criticism is a vital instrument in not only ‘policing’ ideas—in terms of scrutinizing knowledge and ideas disseminated in the public sphere—but also in producing new ideas through the production of meaningful discussions and debates. The lack of a robust practice of criticism may lead to the uncontrolled dissemination of ideas of dubious quality and the (re)production of an equally uncritical public sphere. By examining reviews of non-fiction titles published in 2021 in three online platforms (diastixo.gr, bookpress.gr, hartismag.gr) through the lens of Foucauldian critique, Christos Mais considers the consequences of Greek criticism reaching an all-time low, when book reviews often do little more than replicate the publisher’s press release.

How has the presence of an established Muslim community in Greece shaped the state’s policies towards recent Muslim immigrants? What can the state’s efforts to accommodate religious alterity tell us about democracy in Greece today? In this seminar, Konstantinos Tsitselikis (University of Macedonia) will provide an overview of Muslim presence from the foundation of the Greek state to this day and discuss with Dimitris Antoniou (Columbia University) the emergence of the field of Islamic studies in Greece and its significance in contemporary explorations of government operation and democratic consolidation.

How does one make an archive of migration? What sorts of materials and testimonies should it contain? And what kind of relationship should it establish with the community at its center as well as with broader public audiences? In this workshop, SNFPHI awardee Ilirida Musaraj will present the project Voicing the Albanian Experience in Greece and workshop plans for an upcoming exhibition in Athens. This seminar is co-sponsored by the University Seminar on Modern Greek, the Oral History Master of Arts (OHMA), and the Program in Hellenic Studies.

This talk will give the outlines of a book in the making, which investigates the ways in which a number of individuals writing in Greek from the time of the revolution onward have been either coopted into or excluded from conversations regarding “Greekness,” and likewise included in or excluded from the shifting category of Greek legal citizen. By placing recent mass migrations to and through Greece along a broader historical arc—an arc that includes a number of other migrations that involved individuals, including “Pontic Greeks” and “Asia Minor Greeks'' collectively conceived of as “returning” to their “proper” homeland—we can begin to de-naturalize distinctions between recent and less recent arrivals, and consider more fully the ways in which notions of national belonging have always actively embraced some while pointedly excluding others. Case studies include Dionysios Solomos, C. P. Cavafy, Mimika Kranaki, Ilias Venezis, and others. In collaboration with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) and the Program in Hellenic Studies

In the prologue of her Antigonick, Anne Carson harks back to Ingeborg Bachmann’s verse ‘I lose my screams’, and states: ‘Dear Antigone,/ I take it as the task of the translator/ to forbid you should ever lose your screams’. Inspired by Bachmann’s verse and Carson’s statement, my talk investigates recent re-inscriptions of Antigone in Latin American dramaturgy and performance, in close connection to the process of translating these Antígonas into Modern Greek, but also in relation to contemporary Greek performances. If ‘all reading is translation’ (Spivak), and ‘all translation is adaptation’ (Athanasiou), I look at once at the performativity of texts, bodies, voices, and silences, in order to ask questions such as: how and in which particular contexts does Antigone’s lament get reinvented? How and to what extent can such reinventions mourn disappeared bodies? Which lives are in each case considered to be grievable, and which ones are displaced from the official sphere of memorability? And further, in which ways can we look at these laments -and at their multiform translations- as embodied acts of resistance? In collaboration with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) and the Program in Hellenic Studies

Tsoulakia (Hussies) is a coming-of-age story about two sisters living opposite lives, who need to make important decisions in a single night. In a frantic attempt to secure money, they come up against visions of both a traumatic past and a disturbing reality, while realizing how difficult it is for a family to make ends meet. In collaboration with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) and the Program in Hellenic Studies