Sotiris Rizas (Research Center for Neohellenic History, Academy of Athens; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Neophytos Loizides (Department of Politics and Program in Hellenic Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

Based on recently released American archival sources, this paper is an attempt to study the United States involvement in Greek-Turkish relations in the mid-1970s, with particular emphasis on a six-month period from March through September 1976. The central argument of this paper is that, although the alliance of Greece and Turkey with Washington with respect to both NATO and bilateral dimensions did not prevent the outbreak of crises, it served as a useful framework for preventing the escalation of the controversy into war. The tendency of Greece and Turkey towards a situation of conflict signified undoubtedly that national interests, as perceived in Athens and Ankara, had a priority over the Atlantic alliance and Cold War considerations. It also emphasized the fact that political elites and public opinion in the two countries adopted a more autonomous and critical attitude towards the United States. However, the policies formulated by Greece and Turkey were still oriented towards Washington in the belief that the United States had the capability to resolve the conflict or at least prevent a major debacle for the national interest of each party.

Sotiris Rizas (mailto:srizas@princeton.edu) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Research Center for Neohellenic History in the Academy of Athens. His publications include the following books (in Greek): The Presidency of the Republic in Greek Politics 1924-1935 (Athens 1992); The Macedonian Question: Foreign Intervention and Greek Policy (Athens 1996); Enosis-Partition-Independence: The United States and Britain in Search of a Solution for the Cyprus Question 1963-1967 (Athens 2000); Greece, The United States and Europe, 1961-1964: Political and Economic Aspects of the Security Question from the Cold War to Ditente (Athens 2001); The United States, the Dictatorship of the Colonels and the Cyprus Question 1967-1974 (Athens 2002); From Crisis to Ditente: Constantinos Mitsotakis and the Greek-Turkish Rapprochement (Athens 2003).

Alan M. Stahl (Princeton University Library)
Respondent: Anastasia Stouraiti (Program in Hellenic Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

In 1401 a young Greek man signed on as an oarsman on a Venetian galley. For the next forty-five years, he sailed with the Venetian fleet throughout the Mediterranean and as far as the Netherlands. He rose to the rank of admiral, a rare achievement for someone who was not a native Venetian. In 1434, this man, who called himself simply Michael of Rhodes, set down in a 450 page manuscript various aspects of his world. He wrote out, in Venetian dialect, a long arithmetical treatise, a calendar of saints, various astronomical and astrological tracts, portolan descriptions of coast lines, and the earliest extant text on ship construction. The manuscript, which has been in private hands since its composition and has never before been available for scholarly examination, is now being prepared for publication by an international team of scholars working under the auspices of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT, with funding from the NEH and the NSF. Alan M. Stahl, who has recently come to Princeton as Curator of Numismatics, is co-director of the project. He will discuss the manuscript and its implications for our understanding of the culture of the medieval Mediterranean world.

Alan M. Stahl (astahl@Princeton.EDU) is Curator of Numismatics in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library. He holds a Ph.D. in Medieval History from the University of Pennsylvania. He was Curator of Medieval Coins and of Medals at the American Numismatic Society and has taught as a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Rice University, the University of Notre Dame, and the Universita di Venezia. He is the author of seven books and eighty articles. His two most recent books are an edition of notarial documents from fourteenth-century Crete published by Dumbarton Oaks and a monograph, Zecca; The Mint of Venice in the Middle Ages, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. He is currently co-director of the international team publishing the Codex of Michael of Rhodes and is working on the volume on the coinage of central Italy for the series Medieval European Coinage published by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Tuesday, February 1, 2005 6:00 p.m.

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 (abalasop@princeton.edu) 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.

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 (alidov@princeton.edu) 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).

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 (nkontogi@Princeton.EDU) 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.