PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies
9:00 am - 6:00 pm
010 East Pyne
Facilitated by Harriet I. Flower (Princeton University) and T. Corey Brennan (Rutgers University)
Conference website
Sponsored by the Princeton University Department of History, Humanities Council, Program in the Ancient World, and Program in Hellenic Studies.
Field Research in Athens: Student Reports
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
Caitlin Giaimo '06, Kathryn Hampton '06, Marek Hlavak '08, Aikaterini Kratsios '07, Karen Lillie '09, Jessica Lucas '08, Sage Mehta '07, Matthew Prisco '09, Rebecca Quintal '07, John Raimo '08, Elizabet Sucuyan '09, Kelly Wagner '08
with
Effie Rentzou, Department of Comparative Literature and Program in Hellenic Studies
A field trip to Athens, March 17-26, 2006, formed an integral part of the HLS361/ COM361 seminar "Athens: Representations of a Twentieth Century City" offered during the spring term 2006. The trip complemented the literary, visual, film, and other materials studied in the classroom. In this workshop the student participants will present the independent projects they designed and researched during the class trip. In their encounters with Athens, students move from the city's arcades and neoclassical buildings to the wide variety of movie theatres and restaurants that populate the city; they cross from contemporary art installations to current interpretations of rebetiko music and folk dances; they visit the "Iera Odos," the ancient Sacred Way and the recently gentrified neighborhood of Psiri; they explore representations of Greek military history and they talk with Chinese immigrants; they investigate the relation of the literary avant-garde and the city. These projects reflect the students' personal discoveries in and of the city of Athens, their attempt to represent it, and, together, they form a mosaic through which emerges a broader understanding of what a contemporary city is.
Salvatore Cosentino (University of Bologna; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Roxani Margariti (Emory University; Institute for Advanced Study)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
Despite its usual connotation as a maritime empire, Byzantium fostered ambiguous feelings towards the sea. Its emperors struggled, over the time, to achieve a Mediterranean "thalassokratia," which however never turned to be a "thalassophilia." This was due to several reasons, including the Roman legacy and Christian tradition, as well as a kind of an anthropological distrust towards the sea, which was shared by all medieval societies. Such negative feelings about the sea and seafaring are found in the scarce evidence we have regarding maritime life during the Byzantine era. Fear of the sea also influenced the actions and cultural attitudes of the Byzantine aristocracy
Salvatore Cosentino (scosenti@Princeton.EDU) is Professor of Byzantine History at the University of Bologna. He earned a Ph.D. in Medieval History from the University of Torino in 1990, and he has taught as Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cagliari. He began his research activity in the field of the Venetokratia by studying the social and economic system of the feudum in Venetian Crete (13th - 14th c.). He has studied the social history of early Byzantine Italy on which he wrote several articles. Among the Italian regions under Byzantine rule, he has focused on Sardinia. He is currently working on a prosopography of all the individuals mentioned in Italo-Byzantine sources (two volumes published to date). In the field of Byzantine military literature, he is preparing a study on the "Naumachica" preserved in the codex Ambrosianus 119 B sup.
101 McCormick Hall
Robert Nelson (Yale University)
Lilian Karali (University of Athens; Visiting Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
Over the last several decades Environmental Archaeology has aimed at the reconstruction of past environments and the elucidation of the role and significance of human communities within them. The University of Athens, with the collaboration of the Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology-Speleology of the Greek Ministry of Culture, has undertaken a joint research project to excavate the Leontari cave situated on the mountain of Hymettus near Athens. The main goal of this five-year project is to bring to light the prehistoric habitation of Attica and cult activities during prehistoric and historic times. Due to continuous habitation in the area, the prehistory of Attica is not well known. The Leontari cave excavations are therefore particularly important, and will be a point of reference for future research. For the first time in this area undisturbed strata of occupation have been found; this provides a unique opportunity to explore important stratigraphic and chronological issues as well as the character of the social organization and economic activities of the represented periods. The excavation so far has provided important evidence showing extensive use during the prehistoric and the classical periods. The Neolithic habitation on the site will be studied by detailed radiocarbon control. Theories that characterize the cave as shrine to Pan in Classical times are also confirmed.
Lilian Karali (lkarali@Princeton.EDU) is Professor of Prehistoric and Environmental Archaeology at the University of Athens. She holds undergraduate degrees in History and Archaeology and also in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies from the University of Athens. She did her postgraduate studies in Paris at the University of Sorbonne-Paris I and the Ecole Pratique studying in particular Prehistory and New Methods Applied in Archaeology, and she received her Doctorate in 1979 from the University of Sorbonne-Paris I. She is the founding director of the University Research Unit and the Laboratory of Environmental Archaeology at the University of Athens. Her books and her research focus on ecological and cultural approaches to past societies. Her main project now is the excavation of the Leontari cave.
John F. Matthews (Yale University)
1:30-4:30PM
211 Dickinson Hall
Reception to follow
Philip Rousseau (Catholic University of America)
211 Dickinson Hall
Reception to follow