PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies
Ipek K. Yosmaoglu (Department of Near Eastern Studies)
58 Prospect, Room 107
Respondent: Janet Klein (Department of Near Eastern Studies)
At a meeting of the Statistical Society of London in 1877, Dr. William Farr declared: "I certainly should never expect Turkey to survive unless she consented to become statistical like the rest of Europe." The irony of this statement is that becoming "statistical like the rest of Europe," which the Ottoman Empire attempted in taking the census of 1905-06, turned out to be one of those events that speeded up its demise, by sharpening the perceived differences among the many ethnic communities that inhabited the country. Presenting some of the "ethnographical" maps of Macedonia produced in the second half of the nineteenth century, and contrasting European ethnographers' definitions of the "local races" with those of the locals themselves, this talk will explore the insights offered by maps and census data as "historical sources" in understanding national identity formation.
IPEK K. YOSMAOGLU (yosmaglu@Princeton.EDU) received her M.A degree from the Department of Near Eastern Studies with a thesis on press censorship in the Ottoman Empire. Currently a doctoral candidate in Near Eastern Studies, she is writing a dissertation on Peasants, Rebels and Soldiers: A Social History of Ethnic Conflict in Macedonia, 1897-1912, an analysis of the origins of the Macedonian Conflict focusing on ethnic tension at the communal level. She was a fellow of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 2000-2002.
James Stewart Film Theater, 185 Nassau Street
Introduction and Discussion: P. Adams Sitney (Visual Arts)
(more information)
106 McCormick Hall
This modest show includes pen and ink drawings by Emmanuel Moutafov, made during his appointment as Visiting Fellow in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, spring 2003. Most of the drawings have been inspired by his work in the University Libraries and Manuscript Collections, as well as by discussions with friends and colleagues at Princeton. Moutafov is a Bulgarian art historian and a Hellenist. He was trained in drawing in Bulgaria and has had three one-man shows in Sofia, Athens, and Paris. He has participated in group exhibitions of works by Balkan painters. In recent years he has collaborated with poets, as a book illustrator. He draws for the pleasure of it, but occasionally his work is related to his study of icons, manuscripts and Balkan cultural history of the 18th and 19th centuries.
List of drawings
I could indeed, because our professional training indelibly affects our responses to the world.
In the 19th century, the revived interest in Orthodox icons created the discourse of iconography; the idea behind iconography was to discover the semiotics of Orthodox religious representation and to organize its religious themes. Iconography turned icon itself into a text, derived from another text, a text which at some point leads an independent life of its own. Erwin Panofsky's scholarship (iconology) transferred to a higher level the "textualization" of representation in and the semiotics of painting practice. The younger generation of art historians, as well as everybody who viewed natural objects through the geometric perspective rules of Italian Renaissance, are not used to perceiving the world, or nature as the original source of their inspiration. In other words, they prefer to handle a theme or subject that has already been filtered through somebody else's eyes or perhaps to rely on certain elements integrated in the object of study that reflects a religious Weltanschauung. Thus, for the Byzantine scholar the icon is primarily a collection of symbols, texts and messages; by reading these messages, one begins to interpret the world.
So we are faced with a paradox whereby we unconsciously view nature by attempting to follow the secure steps iconography has taken, and we arrive at what I would call iconopathy.
Emmanuel Moutafov
Location: Firestone Library and The Art Museum
Please visit the website for further information.
McAlpin Rehearsal Room, Woolworth Center
Concert website
The theme of this one-day colloquium is the margins of German Hellenism, in its geographical, temporal and disciplinary sense. German Hellenism is here broadly understood as the active interest taken in aspects of the Greek world, motivated by a belief that there was a benefit in the engagement with a Greek mentality and its cultural and artistic products, to which Germany felt itself bound by a relation of both privilege and duty. The long nineteenth century (stretching from the late eighteenth century to the turn of the next century) sees the institutional development of the study of Classical antiquity, it sees the differentiation of a shared Western debate with antiquity into national approaches and it sees the inclusion of a political Philhellenism within the concerns of cultural Hellenism. To ask about the margins of Hellenism means to investigate the extent to which German Hellenists presented and conceived of themselves as a special case on the European scene, as well as a special section of German society. It looks to present the variety of fields in which Hellenism was very clearly productive: Classical scholarship, philosophical and historical study, literature and architecture, but it also wants to highlight the disciplines that constituted its permeable borders, such as Oriental Studies. Lastly, the question arises whether and, if so, how the momentum which Hellenism gathered took account of the new material appearance of contemporary Greece on the political map of Europe.
This colloquium aims to explore the private life of the Byzantines in the eastern Mediterranean. Day to day activities, their physical settings and material trappings, and the interaction of different social groups engaged therein will be investigated. Areas as diverse as secular architecture, household furnishings, economic activities within the domestic unit, the treatment of mental illness, and the image of the slave in Byzantine society form the subjects of the papers to be presented here. By providing a platform for examining new documentation as well as for looking afresh at well-known material, we hope to contribute to a synthetic image of the Byzantine Habitat.
Please visit the colloquium website or the colloquium poster for more detailed information.