Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

Julia H. Chryssostalis (University of Westminster; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

It is perhaps difficult today to imagine that Athens, the modern city, started its life as a work of fiction: when it became the capital of Greece in 1834, it was still a city only on paper, a city that had no being outside the law and the city plans, a completely imagined, if not hallucinated, city. By providing an urban and historical account of the city's development, the paper explores and examines law's authorial ambitions and argues that Athens presents us with a case of a failed legal 'architectography,' where the law, while seeking to architect the urban text, is constantly displaced from the position of arche, or sole authority of the city's building, that it seeks to occupy. Despite law's attempts to author the urban text, to contain and control it, this has resisted law's authoring and has not stopped writing itself.

Julia H. Chryssostalis is a Principal Lecturer at the School of Law, University of Westminster, and Director of the Westminster Centre for International Law and Theory. She studied Law at the School of Law, University of Thessaloniki, and Political Theory at the Department of Government, University of Essex. While training and practising law as an attorney in Athens, she became Head of the Steering Committee for Human Rights Education of the Greek section of Amnesty International. During 2002-03, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, European University Institute in Florence. She writes on law and the city, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, critical theories of subjectivity and sovereignty, the European post-national polity, constitutional relics and other remainders.  [last updated 2008]

Archibald Dunn (University of Birmingham; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Room 103, Scheide Caldwell House

For three decades archaeologists have been collaborating with historians, environmentalists, and social scientists, to approach the long-term evolution of society within defined areas of Greece and the wider eastern Mediterranean space. Studies of the Byzantine era in Greece can now benefit from the identification, in their regional variety, of previously undocumented and usually unsuspected long-term trends in population, land-use, settlement distribution and typology, and market-penetration of the countryside, even while the interpretation of these apparent trends remains controversial. But, for a number of identifiable reasons, case studies are not forthcoming that reflect the range and distribution of settlements and other paradigmatic sites of activity that Byzantine sources and conventional archaeology, however imperfectly, already reveal. In particular, the real range of Late Antique successors to the Greco-Roman polis/civitas, and the full set of sites around which economic and cultural life would revive in Byzantine Greece, are almost absent from the interdisciplinary surveys' models. In Macedonia and Boeotia, however, we hope that the complementarities between such projects, all with strong Byzantine and medieval components, will correct this distortion and enhance the current dialogue between archaeologists and historians of Byzantium.

Archie Dunn is Teaching and Research Fellow in Byzantine Archaeology in the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, Birmingham University. In his research he uses texts and the archaeologies of settlement and landscape to explore the socio-economic histories of regions of Byzantine Greece. He has co-directed multi-period interdisciplinary surveys in Eastern Macedonia and Western Boeotia and is a member of the publication teams for excavations in Greece and Cyprus, and for the British Academy's survey of Central Boeotia. For the American excavations at Corinth he has completed a monograph on the inscribed Byzantine and Frankish seals. Related to his doctoral thesis about economy and society in Byzantine Macedonia, he has published many articles concerning economic, administrative, urban history, and rural settlement, with a focus on Greece and the Southern Balkans. He is currently preparing for publication his sections of the surveys of Central and Western Boeotia, which concern the Byzantine era (historical and archaeological frameworks, and monuments).  [last updated 2008]

Filippos Oraiopoulos (University of Thessaly; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

The talk will refer to the work of Ioulianos Askalonites, a sixth century architect. Up until today, Askalonites's text has been largely ignored in architectural and city-planning discourse, despite the fact that, as an anti-Vitruvian conceptual paradigm, it formed the basic theoretical background for the architectural traditions of the Mediterrannean and continues to play a decisive role in contemporary architecture and the city. Askalonites's text includes an "eidetic" spatial model, an alternative "poetical" system of a great degree of universality, that through the concept of "eidetic trace" provides the possibility of its being used in specialized modern applications (such as architectural images) as a silent but strong link between the past, the present and the future.

Filippos Oraiopoulos is Associate Professor and Director of the History, Theory and Conceptual Design Labolatory at the Architecture School of the University of Thessaly in Greece. He is the author of Le modéle spatial de l'Orient hellèe: le discours néohellénique sur la ville et l'architecture (Paris, 1998; Greek edition, 1998). He participated in the International Biennale of Architecture in Venice (2004), in the International Biennale of Landscape Architecture in Barcelona (2005), and in the International Biennale of Architecture in San Paolo (2007). He recently exhibited in Athens 100 conceptual drawings on the theme of the Labyrinth. His current research focuses on poetics in architecture, the city and the environment. His forthcoming book is entitled Architecture as Eidetic Trace (in Greek).  [last updated 2008]

Daphne Voudouri (Panteion University, Athens; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Lorraine Sciarra (Senior University Counsel, Princeton University)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

Widely admired in Europe, the physical remains of ancient Greece played a crucial role in shaping Greek national consciousness and legitimizing the modern Greek state. Thus, during the process of building the Greek nation-state, a pioneering and strict national legislation on antiquities was adopted. Its basic principles institutionalized the privileged status of ancient monuments, while legal protection progressively broadened to cover the Byzantine, post-Byzantine and modern cultural heritage. This talk will focus on the relationship between the formation and fostering of national identity in Greece and the legal framework of cultural heritage — in particular, archaeological sites, monuments and objects; and on the close connections of cultural heritage with the state. Furthermore, the Greek case will be situated in the context of the relevant international experience and broader debates about ownership of the past.

Daphne Voudouri is assistant professor of law in the Department of Communication, Media and Culture, Panteion University, Athens, where she has been teaching cultural law and cultural policy since 1995. She studied Law at the University of Athens and earned her Doctorât D'Etat in Law from the University of Paris II. She served as Expert Counselor (1993-98) on cultural agreements at the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was a member (1997-2002) of the committee of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture for the drafting of the current law on cultural heritage. Author of a number of monographs, her most recent book is The State and the Museums: The Institutional Framework of the Archaeological Museums, Athens-Thessaloniki: 2003 (in Greek). Her research and scholarly articles focus on legal, institutional and public policy issues in the fields of culture, cultural heritage and museums.  [last updated 2008]

Judith Herrin (King's College London)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

In the long and unsuccessful struggle to establish uniformity of Christian belief and practice, the seventh century marked a new phase in disagreement over doctrinal definitions and appropriate individual behaviour. Gradually, many Christianities emerged, nominally united by a common commitment to the faith but varied in the way they organised and celebrated it. The Sixth Oecumenical Council (680/1), held in Constantinople with the support of western theologians, reasserted the idea of a universal church but failed to issue any disciplinary canons to enforce its definitions. This talk will examine the wide range of concerns debated at the Council 'in Trullo' (692), which may be compared with similar issues documented at western councils, to trace certain basic difficulties that continued to trouble the ecclesiastical authorities. And behind some unacceptable practices, their pagan predecessors may be glimpsed.

Judith Herrin is Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College London and has recently published Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Princeton University Press: 2008). From 1991-5 Judith Herrin held the the post of Stanley J. Seeger Professor in Byzantine History at Princeton University. In 2002 she was awarded the Golden Cross of Honour by the President of the Hellenic Republic of Greece.  [last updated 2008]

Daphne Voudouri (Panteion University, Athens; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Lorraine Sciarra (Senior University Counsel, Princeton University)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

Widely admired in Europe, the physical remains of ancient Greece played a crucial role in shaping Greek national consciousness and legitimizing the modern Greek state. Thus, during the process of building the Greek nation-state, a pioneering and strict national legislation on antiquities was adopted. Its basic principles institutionalized the privileged status of ancient monuments, while legal protection progressively broadened to cover the Byzantine, post-Byzantine and modern cultural heritage. This talk will focus on the relationship between the formation and fostering of national identity in Greece and the legal framework of cultural heritage - in particular, archaeological sites, monuments and objects; and on the close connections of cultural heritage with the state. Furthermore, the Greek case will be situated in the context of the relevant international experience and broader debates about ownership of the past.

Daphne Voudouri is assistant professor of law in the Department of Communication, Media and Culture, Panteion University, Athens, where she has been teaching cultural law and cultural policy since 1995. She studied Law at the University of Athens and earned her Doctorât D'Etat in Law from the University of Paris II. She served as Expert Counselor (1993-98) on cultural agreements at the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was a member (1997-2002) of the committee of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture for the drafting of the current law on cultural heritage. Author of a number of monographs, her most recent book is The State and the Museums: The Institutional Framework of the Archaeological Museums, Athens-Thessaloniki: 2003 (in Greek). Her research and scholarly articles focus on legal, institutional and public policy issues in the fields of culture, cultural heritage and museums.  [last updated 2008]

Elizabeth Bartman, Independent Scholar
East Pyne 010
Sponsored by: Classics Department and the Princeton Society of the Archaeological Institute of America

Emily Greenwood (University of St. Andrews)
010 East Pyne

Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

Sponsored by the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund.
Princeton students and faculty enrolled in THR365/HLS365 "Re:Staging the Greeks" spent the spring midtern break week in Greece, visitng sites, attending performances, and participating in special workshops offered by Greek artists, directors and choreographers.

Students
Kutadgu Akdogan '10, Lucas Barron '09, Jacqueline Bello '09, Sara-Ashley Bischoff '09, Pilar Castro Kiltz '10, Shannon Clair '09, Kevin Dinkins '09, Becca Foresman '10, Lovell Holder '09, Dominique Salerno '10, Veronica Siverd '10, Lea Steinacker '11, Nadia Talel '10, Lauren Whitehead '09, Samuel Zetumer '09, Adam Zivkovic '10

Faculty
Michael Cadden (Program in Theater and Dance and the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts; Director, Program in Theater and Dance)
Timothy Vasen (Program in Theater and Dance and the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts)

THEATROLOGY: "Princeton Actors in the Birthplace of Drama" will relate impressions gathered during our intense and revelatory ten days in and around Athens, and how our experiences there inform the work we have been doing on Greek Drama over the course of the semester, as well as possible applications to the fall 2008 production of AGAMEMNON/IPHIGENEIA AT AULIS.

Pavlos Avlamis (Department of Classics)
Room 103, Scheide Caldwell House

The Life of Aesop is a novelistic biography of the Phrygian slave who, according to the Greeks, was the inventor of the animal fable. The text circulated anonymously and was transmitted through a variety of recensions from at least the end of the second century CE, through Late Antiquity, into the Byzantine period, and well beyond that. On various accounts (linguistic, thematic, ideological) the text has traditionally been considered a specimen of ancient "popular" or "folk" literature. This talk addresses the text's anonymity, its fluidity in textual transmission, and issues of author function to offer some thoughts on what 'popular' literature means in a period of limited literacy.

Pavlos Avlamis is a graduate student in the Classics Department at Princeton. His main area of research is Hellenistic and Imperial Greek prose fiction and poetry. He is currently working on a dissertation on the Greek Life of Aesop and the category of the 'popular' in Greek Imperial literature.  [last updated 2008]