Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

Alexei Lidov (Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Humanities Program Building, Room 103

This paper is based on the concept of 'Hierotopy' (Ierotopia), meaning the creation of sacred spaces and the historical research that defines this special form of human creativity. Hierotopy spans the traditional fields of art history, archaeology, anthropology, and religious studies. Each particular sacred space may be examined as a new type of historical source which itself is a complex of various arts and cultural activities. From this point of view, architectural setting, pictorial decoration, music context, lighting or fragrance, as well as numerous other rituals, might be considered as elements of this complex structure, and subordinated to the major project of a particular sacred space. The Hierotopic vision and approach may reveal a new layer of subjects. It concerns iconic images created in space. The combination of some images in a specific church, or one image in ritual context could present another iconic image, not formally depicted on panels or walls, but made implicit in a given sacred space between or around the actual pictures. This presentation discusses 'performances' involving miraculous icons in the Hellenic world. A characteristic Byzantine example is the Tuesday rite with the Hodegetria of Constantinople, which was the most venerable 'spatial icon' in the East and the West from the twelfth to fifteenth century. One might find the roots of this phenomenon in the cult of miraculous images in Ancient Greece, which presents similar approaches and archetypal structures. Furthermore, some patterns of Ancient Greek and Byzantine traditions survived in the religious practice of the modern period.

Alexei M. Lidov is a specialist in Byzantine iconography and Eastern Christian sacred images, and since 1991 the founder and director of the Research Center for Eastern Christian Culture in Moscow. He is the author of several books and articles, organizer of international symposia, and editor of collections of articles dedicated to the symbolic language of Eastern Christian culture, including: Jerusalem in Russian Culture (Moscow 1994), The Eastern Christian Church. Liturgy and Art (Saint-Petersburg 1994), The Miracle-Working Icon in Byzantium and Old Rus (Moscow 1996), Byzantine Icons of Sinai (Moscow - Athens 1999), The Iconostasis. Origins-Evolution-Symbolism (Moscow 2000), Relics in the Art and Culture of the Eastern Christian World (Moscow 2000), Christian Relics in the Moscow Kremlin (Moscow 2000), Eastern Christian Relics (Moscow 2003), Hierotopy. Studies in the Making of Sacred Spaces (Moscow 2004). [Last Updated 2005]

Antonios Balasopoulos (University of Cyprus; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
(Formerly the Programs in Humanities Building)

In its own unassuming way, Plato's Critias has been the source of a great deal of bafflement to scholars. Appearing to say very little of philosophical substance, this is a text that is frequently given a measure of significance by being tied to the programmatic goals laid out in the Timaeus or to the discussion of founding a virtuous polis in The Laws. It is remarkable that neither of these gestures has found an occasion to engage seriously with the formal features of what is arguably the text's most prominent, carefully wrought, and conceptually innovative section - the detailed description of the geographical and urban space of the capital of the island of Atlantis. This resistance originates in the virtually universal assumption that the aim of the text is didactic (to set Atlantis up as the corrupt antitype of virtuous antediluvian Athens) - an assumption that inevitably makes the middle section of the text appear embarrassingly superfluous. But, this essay will suggest, reading Critias as a "lesson" premised on binary ethical oppositions is a very limited way of reading the function of myth itself. A close reading of Critias (particularly 113-118) will on the contrary illustrate that the form of Atlantic space provides expression to a series of cognitive difficulties whose significance cannot be accounted for without a far more sophisticated approach to the relationship between myth, space and thought - one that ultimately challenges the traditionally binary conception of Plato's philosophical metaphysics.

Antonis Balasopoulos received his Ph.D. from the English Department of the University of Minnesota (1998) and is currently a Lecturer at the Department of English Studies at the University of Cyprus. He has been a fellow of the National Fellowship Foundation (I.K.Y) in Greece (1987-1990), the University of Minnesota (1994-1997), and the Salzburg Seminar (2001). His research and publications have focused on 18th and 19th century American prose fiction and on utopian fiction, with a particular emphasis on the intersections between literature, geography and the political. He is currently co-editing a special journal issue on "Comparative Literature and Global Studies" and working on a book manuscript on utopian fiction and expansionist fantasy in United States culture. [Last Updated 2005]

Nikolaos Kontogiannis (Hellenic Ministry of Culture; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
RESPONDENT: Nikolas Bakirtzis, Department of Art and Archaeology
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

The aim of this workshop is to give an overview of a very diverse, yet locally restricted, body of material: the castles and fortified cities in the area of Messenia, in the south-west Peloponnese, Greece. The focus is not on the description of individual features, but rather on the establishment of a chronological order within which questions of evolution and function of the fortifications can be considered. Over a period of more than ten centuries, political boundaries and rulers often changed and military architecture was constantly adapted both to evolving geopolitical situation and to advances in warfare. The latest additions, transformations, or other interventions to these structures in some cases run into the twentieth century, presenting thus an interesting case of newly acquired function and re-use.

Nikolaos Kontogiannis is an archaeologist, currently working for the Committee for the Preservation, Restoration, and Promotion of the Castles of the Pylia Province, Messenia, of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. He studied at the Universities of Athens (B.A., Ph.D.) and Birmingham (M.Phil.). His main field of interest is the late Byzantine and Frankish period (13th-15th centuries), especially the study of military architecture and ceramics. His publications have focused on the islands of Kos and Andros, as well as on the area of Messenia. He has participated in numerous excavations and field research, and currently works on the publication of their results. [Last Updated 2005]