PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies
Ioannis Papadopoulos (Friends of the Library Research Grant Winner 2005-2006 funded by the Program in Hellenic Studies, Panteio University)
Firestone Library, West Room, 2nd Floor
Sponsored by Firestone Library, Friends of the Library and the Program in Hellenic Studies
This talk will focus on the policies of the Greek and the Ottoman states towards immigrants from their territories to America during the period 1875-1912. Both Greece and the Ottoman Empire attempted to use the immigrants to promote their respective state interests to the American public and government. Before WWI, the immigration experience contributed to the consolidation of the fluid identity of the immigrants from the Ottoman Empire, or to the transformation of their preexisting religious identity into a national one. Conflicts among different factions in immigrant communities, as well as the case of the "Panhellenic Union," an organization of Greek-Americans promoted by the Greek State, will serve as examples to illustrate the relation between local leaders and representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church and state.
Yannis Papadopoulos holds an M.A. in Anthropology from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, a M.S. in Cultural Information Systems from the University of Crete, and a B.A. in History and Archeology from the University of Ioannina. He is a temporary associate of the "Pandektis" program at the Institute of Neohellenic Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, and is currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation at Panteio University, Athens, on the "Greek Orthodox immigrants from the Ottoman Empire to the USA and the Foreign Policy of the Greek State."
This is a lunch presentation, so bring a sandwich and enjoy!
Benedetta Bessi (Mary Seeger O'Boyle Post-Doctoral Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Alan Stahl (Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
The rediscovery of Greece and its legacy by Italian humanists has gained an increasing amount of attention from archaeologists and art historians alike. The life and works of the fifteenth century Florentine traveler Cristoforo Buondelmonti, a pioneer in promoting first-hand knowledge of Greece and its antiquities throughout the Western world, offer a useful, if until recently overlooked, insight into the reconstruction of the early phase of this renewed interest in Classical Greece and its antiquities. The first part of this talk will outline the cultural background of Buondelmonti and the scopes of his travels, introducing his most famous work, the Liber Insularum, a description of the Greek islands that he visited between 1414 and 1430. The second part will be a presentation of the chapter of the Liber dedicated to the island of Siphnos, as a case study of Buondelmont's approach to antiquities and his role in creating a new image of Greece, both as a geographical entity and as an intellectual topos.
Benedetta Bessi (bbessi@princeton.edu) is a Classical archaeologist who studied in Florence, Munich, and Athens. She previously taught History and Archaeology of Rome and Classical Mythology at the Rome Center of Richmond, the American International University of London. As a fellow of the Italian Archaeological School of Athens (1995-1998) she has been involved in field projects and researches on Crete and the Cycladic islands, with a special interest in the island of Siphnos. A member of the Italian mission to Sabratha, Libya, since 1998, she obtained her Ph.D. (2002) from the University of Messina with a dissertation on the necropolis of this Punic-Roman emporion. Besides Greek and Roman archaeology, her present research focuses on the history of Greek archaeology and in particular the early Florentine humanistic circles and Classical antiquity.
Jennie Hirsh (Hannah Seeger Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Hal Foster (Department of Art and Archaeology)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
This paper will provide an overview of the notion of "Mediterranean Modernity" along with a close reading of melancholy in the work of Giorgio de Chirico as well as Andy Warhol and Mike Bidlo, two post-war American artists who have "melancholically" appropriated de Chirico's pictorial contribution. This presentation is part of Hirsh's larger current project, "Mediterranean Modernity," in which she expands this thesis to include the Greek artists Fotis Kontoglou, Nikos Engonopoulos, and Yannis Tsarouchis together with the Italians Gino Severini and Massimo Campigli, artists whose work belies a similar preoccupation with the burden of tradition. Her 2003 doctoral dissertation, "Self-Portraiture and Self-Representation: The Painting and Writing of Giorgio de Chirico," explores the ways in which de Chirico's pictorial and literary projects manifest a complicated relationship with tradition and history (as well as art history), arguing for de Chirico's melancholic orientation not only toward antiquity but also toward representation itself.
Jennie Hirsh (jhirsh@princeton.edu) received her Ph.D. in December 2003 from the Department of History of Art at Bryn Mawr College, where she wrote a dissertation on pictorial and literary self-representation in the oeuvre of the Greek-born Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico. She also holds an MA in Italian Renaissance Art from Bryn Mawr, an MA in Italian from Middlebury College, and a BA in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. From 2003-2005, she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture at Oberlin College. Prior to that appointment, she taught adjunct courses on modern and contemporary art, the history of Western Art, Italian Renaissance art and architecture, postwar Italian cinema, and Italian language at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, Moore College of Art & Design, and Temple University.
Vasiliki Grigoropoulou (University of Crete; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Daniel Garber (Department of Philosophy)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
Cookies and drinks will be provided
One can hardly find an aspect of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding that has received more attention than his theory of personal identity: "to find wherein personal Identity consists, we must consider what Person stands for" (II, xxvii, 9). The paper will focus on two definitions of the concept of person in Locke's Essay. The first explains without moral overtones that a person consists neither in her body nor in her soul but in her consciousness. According to the second definition, "Person" is a "forensic Term appropriating Actions and their Merit." The latter can be traced back to Ancient Greek and Roman Rhetoric, as well as Epicurean moral philosophy. It will be argued that the modern notion of a moral person, capable of defending herself simply on the basis of consciousness, not property or possessions, has incorporated elements of premodern philosophies.
Vasiliki Grigoropoulou (vgrigoro@princeton.edu) teaches modern philosophy at the University of Crete. Her area of specialization is the connections amongst knowledge, emotions, and politics in early modern philosophy. She has published articles on Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and Rousseau (in Leviathan, Axiologica, Deucalion, Politis). She is the author of Knowledge, Passions, and Politics in Spinoza's Philosophy (Alexandria Press: Athens, 1999, in Greek) and the editor of Spinoza's Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Athens: Polis Press, 2001, 2nd edition 2002, in Greek). Her book Education and Politics in Rousseau was published in 2002 (Athens: Alexandria Press, in Greek); she is the co-editor of Spinoza: Towards Freedom (Athens: Axiologica, 2002, in Greek) and the editor of J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract (Polis Press: Athens 2004, in Greek).