PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies
ABSTRACT:
The Islamic law (sheriat) court, administering justice according to the principles of Hanefi jurisprudence, was the main judicial institution of the Ottoman Empire. Recent research has elucidated many aspects of the functioning of the sheriat court, not only in its judicial but also in its equally important administrative capacity. Some studies have stressed (often with admiration and surprise) its strict adherence to the principles and requirements of the law, while others have focused on its use by the state as a powerful tool in order to achieve centralization and control provincial society. The role of the sheriat court as part of the local society in the provinces of the Empire remains, however, largely unexplored. This is exactly the issue the present paper aims to address, using as case study a complex inheritance dispute from the early 17th century, which evolves round the alleged conversion of a ten-year old Christian boy.
Eleni Gara (egara@princeton.edu) is the Hannah Seeger Davis Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Hellenic Studies, academic year 2001-2002. In 2001, she earned her Ph.D. in Modern Greek Studies from the University of Vienna, with a dissertation on "Kara Ferye 1500-1650: People, Local Society, and Administration in an Ottoman Province" (in German). As Research Historian at the Foundation of the Hellenic World (Athens) since 1997, she serves on the editorial committee of the journal "Imeros;" she is a member (responsible for the Byzantine and early Ottoman periods) of the editorial team for the "Encyclopaedia Micrasiatica Graeca" project; and she participates in the electronic documentation project "Knowledge Data-Base on Greeks in Asia Minor." Her research project at Princeton is on "Realities and Perceptions: The Ottoman sharia Court in the Greek Lands."
McCormick Hall, Room 106, reception to follow.
Peter Green: "Caelum non Animum"
Edmund Keeley: "The Landscape of Cavafy's 'Ionic'"
Alexander Nehamas: "This Poem Can't Exist: Cavafy's 'Painted'"
Eleni Sikelianos: "Cafavy's 'Voices'"
PLACE: Room 107 - 58, Prospect Ave.
Reception and Dinner will follow
Peter Green (University of Iowa; Writer-in-Residence, Program in Hellenic Studies) Email: pgreen@princeton.edu Peter Green earned his Ph.D. in Classics from Cambridge University and started his career as independent writer, translator (French, Italian, Latin, Greek: ancient and modern) scholar, teacher, and journalist, in London (1954-63) and Greece (1963-71), before moving to the University of Texas at Austin (Professor of Classics, 1971-97) where he was Dougherty Centennial Professor (1983-97) and now is Professor of Classics, Emeritus. Since 1998, he has been Adjunct Professor of Classics at the University of Iowa. A regular reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement (1954-) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1957-), he is the author of over 25 books. His recent publications include: Alexander to Actium (1990); Alexander of Macedon (1992); Yannis Ritsos, The Fourth Dimension (transl.) 1993; and Apollonios Rhodios, The Argonautika (1997). At Princeton, he is working on a novel on English and American expatriates in Greece after WWII and is translating poetry by Katerina Angelaki-Rooke.
Peter Green(University of Iowa; Writer-in Residence, Program in Hellenic Studies) Email: pgreen@princeton.edu
TITLE: Aegean Expatriates in the Sixties: Dream and Reality
ABSTRACT: This workshop will begin with a discussion of the problems and psychology of Aegean expatriates, in particular those of the post-war period immediately prior to the tourist explosion of the past three decades, and will illustrate these problems with readings from my poetry, and my novel-in-progress, Mirrors Are Lonely, The discussion will deal with (a) the fundamental motives of the Aegean expatriate: both positive (the historical and mythic tradition of Greece; the Mediterranean climate and ethos; islomania, &c.) and negative (disengagement from one's own, or sometimes any, social framework, escapism, &c. , whether for intellectual, social, or sexual reasons), and (b) the various effects of this contracting-out from a social framework, on one's personal conduct and beliefs, and in particular upon families and children. All this would be in relation to, and conditioned by, attitudes to work and the work-ethic, coupled with the underlying financial terms dictating, ultimately, one's status as a metoikos [resident alien], and the ability to shape an existence and a lifestyle in a Greek context very often at serious odds with the expatriate's own assumptions.