Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

Place: 102 Jones Hall

Yiorgos Anagnostou (Ohio State University; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

Neither a homogeneous ethnic culture nor a bounded social field, Greek America confronts the researcher with formidable methodological challenges. From what perspective can one negotiate this heterogeneous, complex terrain of texts, people, institutions, practices, and transnational connections without exercising methodological violence to its complexity? This presentation addresses the question by focusing on the methodological challenges in researching the cultural production of "usable pasts" in Greek America. A number of scholarly threads from sociology, anthropology, folklore, cultural studies and modern Greek studies frame the analysis. The current proliferation of ethnographies written by non-professional folklorists -- a mode of cultural production that could be called "popular folklore" -- will be brought into focus in order to outline a cultural studies approach that helps illuminate aspects of this multifaceted terrain. This approach will show how Greek-American popular folklore can inform an interventionist analysis of "white" ethnicity in the United States. In this regard, a number of specific popular ethnographies will be analyzed to demonstrate that the meta-ethnography of popular folklore opens a discursive space to interrogate dominant sociological paradigms on white ethnics.

Yiorgos Anagnostou  is an assistant professor in the Department of Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University, where he earned his Ph.D. in Modern Greek Studies, American Ethnic Studies, and Ethnography (1999). His research focuses on the areas of ethnic and immigration cultural studies, diaspora, modern Greek studies, and ethnography, where he has published widely. He is in the process of completing a book-length manuscript tentatively entitled "How 'White Ethnicity' Matters: Making Usable Pasts in Greek America." Last Updated 2005]

Angela Volan (Mary Seeger O'Boyle Post-Doctoral Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

The years following the fall of Constantinople in 1453 saw a revival of interest in Byzantine apocalyptic prophecies regarding the restoration of the Empire at the end of time. Greek manuscript workshops in the Venetian colony of Crete were responsible for much of the production, illustration, and dissemination of this material in the post-Byzantine period. Yet, it is likely that the collectors of these works, both Venetian and Greek, appreciated them more as cultural artifacts of a Byzantine historical past rather than as legitimate prophecies of a universal future. Though these manuscripts recorded and to some degree canonized the literary tradition of Byzantine apocalyptic prophecy, they were objects of fascination for the humanist historian and antiquarian, rather than for the true believer. This workshop will discuss the place of Byzantine apocalypticism within the larger context of humanistic studies in the Greek-speaking areas of the Mediterranean. In particular, we will focus on how portraiture was used in these manuscripts as a visual device meant to construct the idea of a Byzantine apocalyptic tradition, in contrast to an alternate lineage of humanist scholars writing in Latin and Italian.

Angela Volan received her B.A. in Philosophy and Art History from the University of Michigan in 1993. She went on to earn an M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2005) in Art History from the University of Chicago, specializing in the art and visual culture of Byzantium. Her doctoral dissertation explored the political and cultural significance of Byzantine apocalyptic imagery as it developed in the late and post-Byzantine periods, particularly in regions undergoing colonial transformation. In 2001 and 2002, she conducted field research in Crete and mainland Greece as both an Alexander S. Onassis Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow. Her current research focuses on the production and circulation of illustrated versions of Byzantine apocalyptic texts in the Greek colonies of Venice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She is particularly interested in the influence of Italian humanist scholarship in post-Byzantine Greece and its impact on the revival of Byzantine apocalypticism during this time. Last Updated 2005]

Maria Theodorou (Hellenic Ministry of Culture; Fulbright Visiting Fellow, School of Architecture)
PLACE: Room 103, Scheide Caldwell House, Princeton University

On the occasion of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture launched an architectural competition "Ephemeral Structures in the City of Athens." The competition provided young architects an opportunity to imagine catalytic interventions that could generate urban transformations. The interventions would not be site-specific and would conceptually embody the metaphor of host and parasite, as well as the idea of Athens, the host city - as experienced, remembered or simply imagined. The innovative strength of this competition lay in the fact that the parameters were neither contextual, nor typologically driven, nor based on the idea of urban design as planning. The projects were seen more as 'acupunctural' interventions, whose impact would offer the inhabitants an opportunity to re-orient their perception of Athens: in other words, interventions that would themselves re-make the context. Maria Theodorou, director of this competition, will discuss the submission and evaluation process and its outcome: 466 projects from 46 countries and 34 award winning projects submitted mainly by an international generation of talented young architects.

Maria Theodorou holds a Ph.D. from the Architectural Association, London, with a dissertation on "The Experience of Space in Relation to Architecture in the Homeric Epics" (1998). She previously earned a Graduate Diploma (1991) from the University of Rome, while her first professional degree (1981) in Architecture was from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is a practicing architect, currently head of the Architecture Network in Athens. She has been adviser to the Minister of Culture in Greece (1996-2004), adviser on architecture events for the Cultural Olympiad (2001-2004), and Council of Europe expert on Cities' Cultural Policy (2003). She lectures and publishes on architecture theory, she is the editor of The Athens D.O.E.S. Series, and is also member of the Archis magazine International Board, (2000-2004). Maria Theodorou serves as an A.A. visiting critic, invited juror to international architecture competitions, project manager of EU projects, and curator-in-chief for architecture exhibitions in Europe.Last Updated 2005]

Jack Fairey (Ted and Elaine Athanassiades Post-Doctoral Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Molly Greene (Department of History and Program in Hellenic Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

Owing to religion, economics, and geographical proximity, the obvious and close ties forged between Russia and the Orthodox populations of the Near East have often led historians to treat Russia as though it were the sole European state to involve itself actively in the affairs of the Orthodox Church. This was not so, as can be seen from the fact that in 1840 it was Great Britain, not Russia, that became the first foreign power to demand and secure the removal of a reigning Orthodox patriarch, Grigorios VI Foutouniadis. In order to accomplish this, Britain had to overcome the strenuous objections of Russia, of the Ottoman government, and of the Orthodox community itself, to such an unprecedented intervention in Orthodox ecclesiastical matters. The details of this affair will be reconstructed on the basis of contemporary press reports and diplomatic correspondence, and we will look particularly at what the incident reveals about British policies towards the Orthodox Church in the mid-nineteenth century.

Jack Fairey holds an undergraduate degree in History from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, B.C.) and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Modern Balkan and Ottoman History from the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation, "The Great Game of Improvements: Religious Reform and European Imperialism in the Eastern Mediterranean" (2004), examines the competing efforts of British, French, Russian, and Austrian diplomats to control the nature and speed of secularizing reforms among the Orthodox Christian and other non-Muslim communities of the Ottoman Empire during the mid-nineteenth century. His research interests include the post-Byzantine history of the Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and European diplomacy in the Near East. He has previously taught modern Greek history at York University in Toronto.  [Last Updated 2005]