PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies
The film showing is at 58 Prospect Avenue room 107.
Portland State University
Writer-in-Residence, Program in Hellenic Studies
ABSTRACT:
By now, the trauma that Greece had suffered from the military dictatorship (1967-1974) seems to have passed and resulted in a healthier democracy, one less dependent on foreign control (if we consider benign the demands of the European Community) on its foreign policy and institutions. Three decades after the collapse of the Junta, it is time to study its cost in human lives and in political and cultural freedoms. This workshop is an attempt to document in narrative form the events that took place hour-by-hour on the evening of the coup d' etat using many first hand accounts that have not yet found their way into print. It represents Chapter One of The Iron Storm, a study of the political and intellectual crises that led to the coup and its aftermath, the suspension of most articles of the Constitution, the crushing of civil rights, and the imprisonment and torture of thousands of citizens, mainly intellectuals. How did writers, seized and imprisoned in the middle of the night, eventually learn to confront dictators, determined to silence them, yet incapable of leading a nation. During the years 1968 to 1970, Doulis was in Greece on a Fulbright and met many of the writers mentioned in this narrative. It is expected that subjects not covered in the reading -- supplemented by handouts on "Predictive Tremors" (events before the coup), "Junta Pronouncements, "Landmarks, major cultural events during the dictatorship, and a list of prohibited books -- will be discussed in the question and answer period.
THOMAS J. DOULIS (tdoulis@princeton.edu) is an Emeritus Professor of English at Portland State University. He studied at Stanford University under Wallace Stegner, Malcom Cowley and Frank O'Connor. Path for our Valor (Simon and Schuster, 1963), his first novel, was his master's thesis. He served with the 82nd Airborne Division, attached to Special Forces, for which he wrote the field manual, and since the 1960s had divided his time and efforts between the writing of fiction [The Quarries of Sicily (Crown, 1969) and The Open Hearth (Xlibris, 2001)] and the study of modern Greek fiction, publishing a critical biography, George Theotokas (Twayne, 1975); and a critical analysis of the development of modern Greek prose fiction, Disaster and Fiction: The Impact of the Asia Minor Disaster of 1922 on Modern Greek Fiction (University of California Press, 1977). He has produced and two photographic studies of the Greeks in Oregon, A Surge to the Sea, 1977 and Landmarks of Our Past, 1983. He has translated the poetry of Nikiphoros Vrettakos, the fiction of George Ioannou, as well as Shaved Heads, the novel of Nikos Kasdaglis. Most recently, he has published a translation of Thanos Vlekas (Northwestern University Press, 2000), an 1856 novel by Pavlos Kalligas. Doulis has for the past three years taught courses in cinema offered through Portland State and the Northwest Film Studies Center of the Portland Museum of Art., specializing in film noir. This spring he will be teaching an Elia Kazan Retrospective.
ABSTRACT:
Like the Kings of France who all wanted to be buried at S. Denys, Byzantine rulers sought their final resting place in the Mausoleum of Constantine attached to his Church of the Holy Apostles, or in the second Mausoleum built by Justinian in the sixth century. Yet many were buried in quite different places. This paper explores how their intentions were thwarted and their bones moved from one tomb to another, often at the express wish of their female relatives. It also considers the role of women in planning and building family shrines, where their relations would be remembered with liturgies performed for the good of their souls on the anniversaries of their deaths. This novel method of commemoration seems to have become increasingly common during the turbulent period of the eighth and ninth centuries.
JUDITH HERRIN (judith.herrin@kcl.ac.uk) is Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College London and was formerly Stanley J. Seeger Professor of Byzantine history at Princeton. She is the author of The Formation of Christendom (Princeton University Press, 1987). She is visiting Princeton in connection with the launch of her new book, Women in Purple (Princeton University Press, 2001), which developed out of her work on Byzantine women. A study of three Byzantine empresses, the book addresses the assumption that women are essentially favorable to holy images and treasure their icons. It also investigates the period of Byzantine iconoclasm from the point of view of three individual women, who took a leading role in the political developments of the period.
ABSTRACT
The talk will present the development of Venizelos's ideas on foreign policy and the style and content of his diplomacy throughout this crucial period, covering the formation of the Balkan system of alliances and the expansion of Greece after the Balkan Wars; the struggle of Venizelos and the King over the issue of war or neutrality in the Great War; Venizelos's intensive diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference; the occupation and military campaign in Asia Minor; and the negotiation of the exchange of populations at Lausanne. Questions addressed will include: the extent of Venizelos's personal contribution to the making and implementation of foreign policy; the links between internal policy and diplomacy; the reasons for a policy over Asia Minor which ended in disaster; and the basis of Venizelos's belief in a close alignment with the western liberal democracies, and the consequences and problems of such an alignment.
BIO
Michael Llewellyn Smith(mllewell@princeton.edu) studied Classics at New College, Oxford, and obtained a D.Phil. at St. Antony's College Oxford in 1970 for his thesis on Greece in Asia Minor 1919-22. He then joined the British Diplomatic Service and served in Moscow, Paris, Athens and Warsaw. He was Ambassador in Warsaw 1991-96 and in Athens 1996-99. He has published two books, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919-22 (new edition C Hurst & Co 1998) and The Great Island: A Study of Crete (Longmans 1965). He delivered the Runciman Lecture 2001 at King's College London on "Varieties of Philhellenism." He is a member of the Council of London University, member of the Council of the Anglo-Hellenic League, and a Vice President of the British School at Athens. He is married, to Colette, and they have two children.