PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies
Fifth International Graduate Student Conference in Modern Greek Studies
Friday, May 10, 2013
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
The University of Ionia: Nation building or its deviation?
Abstract
On the site of a Jewish cemetery on the Bahri Baba hill in the centre of Smyrna, in May 1919, the Greek administration of Smyrna found a half-completed building that had been initiated by the Young Turks to become a Muslim School. For its construction, the archaeological site of Ephesus nearby had become a convenient source of marble fragments, which were used as building materials. This already layered structure would become the physical basis for the realization of the University of Ionia, Venizelos and Stergiadis’s vision for a university open to all ethnic groups of Smyrna and equal to the best universities of the West. The ambitious mission for tis realization fell upon a bright mathematician and professor, Constantin Karatheodori. Aristotelis Zahos, the prominent architect in charge of the restoration of Saint Demetrius in Thessaloniki, was invited to supervise the architectural project, while the latest furniture, machinery and hundreds of books were ordered and shipped in from Europe.
The university never opened. It was almost complete on the day the Turkish troops entered the city of Izmir on September 9th 1922, marking the end of an ill-fated expansionist Greek campaign into the centre of Anatolia. The building became a Girls School (Kız Lisesi) and retains this function today.
How does the physical palimpsest of the building, its sedimentary nature that brings together so diverse cultural traces, intersect with the successive ideologies that were projected on and invested in it? How does it participate in the wider processes of Greek and Turkish nation-building in which architecture and urbanism held no less than a protagonist role? Based on extensive archival research in Paris, Athens and Izmir, my research aims to analyse the built form as a participant in the discursive formation of identity. Structured around the project of the University of Ionia/Kiz Lisesi, and expanding to the city scale, this paper explores the urban and architectural dimensions of Smyrna/Izmir’s transition from the Empire to the -Greek and then the Turkish- nation states and analyses the systems of signification and representation that contribute to, or possibly resist, each administration’s hegemonic national narrative.
This case study, situated outside the area burnt during the 1922 fire, will be subsequently be discussed in relation to the reconstruction of the burnt zone, where the French urban planners Rene and Raymond Danger and Henri Prost were asked to design a new modern city, paramount to the new Turkish society.
Izmir reveals the complexities and fluidity of identity formation in a unique way. At the same time, however, its story is very similar to another multicultural port that went through dramatic modernization and nationalization in the early 20th century; the city of Thessaloniki. It is not a coincidence that Aristotelis Zahos was also in the reconstruction committee of Thessaloniki after its 1917 fire, along with another yet French Architect, Ernest Hebrard. During my presentation I will draw parallels between the two cities, analyzing the ways our history has been written, or contested, in the urban space.
Kalliopi Amygdalou is a doctoral candidate in Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the involvement of architecture and urbanism in the processes of modernization and nation-building in the Greece and Turkey (1900-1940). She holds a Diploma in Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens (Distinction) and a M.Sc. in Culture and Society from the London School of Economics. For her Ph.D. studies she is funded by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (2011-2013) and by the Foundation for Education and European Culture (IPEP, 2010-2011).
Liebes Räthsel, fass’ ich dich? –
Odysseus Elytis and the Ethics of Romanticism
Abstract
The notion of “ethics” and “ethos” permeates Elytis’s writings. In many of his texts—including the Nobel Academy address—Elytis makes explicit mention of the Greek language as an “instrument of magic and carrier of ethical values.” The aim of my dissertation is to delineate the meaning of “ethos” and “ethics” for Elytis and to systematically analyze the mechanisms through which these notions operate in his poetry. By combining philological, cultural-political, and literary critical approach in my research, I aspire to better understand various dimensions of ethics and the ethical in Elytis’s work. I believe that what Elytis called “ethical values” (ēthikès axíes) occupies a central position in his poetry and in his philosophical worldview, but that the significance of these issues has escaped the attention of, or has been ignored by, most critics.
The last two decades have seen an explosion of literary theoretical and critical studies dealing with the relation between ethics and literature, on the one hand, and a rising interest in the philosophy of German Romanticism, on the other. My paper focuses on a positioning of Elytis’ text within these fields, in an attempt to illuminate the complexity of his philosophical answers. While his indebtedness to French Surrealism has been widely recognized by scholars, his conversation with Romantics, particularly Friedrich Hölderlin and Dionysios Solomos, remains very little studied. Many of Elytis’ aesthetic theories (theory of analogies, theory of the “planetary system,” ideas on prismatic expression) may be directly linked to the theoretical writings developed by Romantic philosophers and thinkers, especially the Romantic theory of the fragment, the ideas on primordial unity, and the notion of “ethical paradise,” which makes appearance in many Elytis’ texts.
My discussion will draw from the material that became accessible in recent years, including Elytis’ less known early interviews and parts of his personal correspondence. A study of Elytis’ manuscripts, above all the notebooks of The Axion Esti, may shed more light on his elective affinities with the Romantics, and especially Solomos. My exploration of Elytis’ dialog with Hölderlin includes an overview of the reception of the German poet in Greece and covers a number of diverse secondary topics, including the writings by Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Pindar, but also modern thinkers, such as Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin’s poetry, which could be discerned in the background of Elytis’ poems and essays.
Vladimir Boskovic is a PhD candidate in the Program of Modern Greek Studies at Harvard University. His dissertation deals with the ethical philosophy of the Greek poet Odysseus Elytis and his dialog with German Romanticism, particularly Friedrich Hölderlin. He graduated in the Classics Department at the University of Belgrade and got his MA in Modern Greek Literature at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. He worked in Dumbarton Oaks and the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC, and as a research assistant at Harvard. He participated in several international projects and conferences. His interests include Modern Greek poetry, Platonic philosophy, the age of Enlightenment, travel literature, and the Byzantine cultural tradition.
The Historical Culture of the 1940s in Greek Classical Music
Abstract
While the events of the Second World War are nowadays well known in musical and, more generally, cultural history, in the Greek case, on the contrary, the musical works that were created about the war have almost never been the subject of thorough historical or even musicological research. An important part of the so-called classical musical output of Greece during the 1940s – a period encompassing the World War and ensuing Civil War (1946-1949) – was characterized by a very strong connection to the historical facts and developments of that particular era. These works belonged to very diverse musical schools. Those by Nikos Skalkottas or Iannis Xenakis, for example, adopted the musical language of the avant-garde, others, by Manolis Kalomiris or Dimitris Levidis, followed romanticism and the National Music School, while Mikis Theodorakis and Alekos Xenos adopted socialist realism. Additionally, considerable importance was placed on the use of children’s patriotic songs in the media and education system, in particular. Following the liberation of Greece (1944), a number of war films with significant soundtracks, such as those by Menelaos Pallantios, were produced.
This diversity in the use of musical languages reflects, at one level, the manifold relationship of the composers with the dominant political and cultural discourse. This heterogeneity was a structural part of the discourse and, simultaneously, it resisted and later reinforced that discourse. On a secondary level, the composers through their work pursued the reconstruction of a destroyed and fragmented identity, both personal and national, in its multiple and subjective expressions. As a consequence, this intense differentiation was probably a formal part of this endeavour.
This paper focuses on the interactive relation between music creation and cultural and collective memory. In the aforementioned cases of musical process, the composers deal with traumatic historical experiences (occupation, civil war) by providing common cultural frameworks in order to appropriate the past. The handling of traumatic historical events presupposes, in a way, a selective recall and convergence of individual memories (such as deriving the inspiration from antiquity, folk tradition and, finally, the struggles and the historical mission of the Greek nation). In other words, this paper probes the interactive role of music and the historical culture of the 1940s.
From a methodological point of view, I intend to bridge the limits between historical and musicological studies. As a result, I seek to elucidate the interdisciplinarity between history, musicology, cultural and memory studies. Therefore, my investigation draws not only from the archives of musical institutions but also recordings, musical reviews, audio archives and scores.
Bio
Elli Charamis is a doctoral candidate at Athens University, in the Department of History. Her Thesis is about the intersection of Greek Classical Music with the historical events and developments of that particular era. Elli is focusing on the concepts of trauma, collective and cultural memory, as well as historical culture, in order to understand the peculiarities of the aforementioned relationship. Her interests include Cultural Studies, Memory Studies, Theory of History, Greek Classical Music (1900-1950). She holds a diploma and a MA from the Athens University and she has studied violin from 2000 up to the present.
Ways of identity in the Greek-Orthodox communities
of Central Mediterranean (XVIII century):
a regional perspective
Abstract
In the field of Modern Greek studies, the representation of diaspora in early modern Mediterranean as a topos of the Hellenic identity, is largely shared from the scholars. This paper challenges the methodological and hermeneutical bases of this approach, and particularly the concept of diaspora. With its reference to a clear-cut cultural and religious identity, this notion reduces the complexity of migration process, eclipsing the experience of crossing confessional borders and the occurrence of integration or assimilation dynamics in the host societies. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the intercultural and interdisciplinary approach to migration (Klaus J. Bade, L. Lucassen, P.C. Emmer) is here adopted as an alternative framework to the paradigm of diaspora.
This paper is an attempt to shed light on the socially and culturally composited and shifting structure of “western Orthodoxy”. The aim is to explore the social practices and the interplay (through kinship, fatherhood, ecclesiastical and commercial relationships) among Greek-rite settlements on a regional scale - the Central Mediterranean - during the Eighteenth century. In particular, the analysis is concerned with the community of Naples. This community is, in fact, the core of a wide network that extended through several orthodox communities or groups settled in the realm of Naples (Abruzzo, Puglia, Calabria, Sicily) and in other Mediterranean lands (Corsica, Tuscany, Trieste, Venice and Malta).
The use of social, economic and ecclesiastical sources (judicial and commercial acts, diplomatic records, notary deeds, wills, parish registers, etc…) and the reports issued by Propaganda Fide allow to investigate this community and its networks from several points of view - rather than only through that of the community institutions.
In this region the Greek-speaking group is undoubtedly a dominant presence; yet from the archival documents a strong heterogeneity emerges in the social, linguistic and confessional spheres. This diversity is particularly sharp in the community of Naples, where Greek-rite Christians from many different Mediterranean lands meet with each other. Here we observe a mix of linguistic groups (Greeks, Himariotes, Italo-Albanians, Slavs); of “confessional situations” (dissimulated affiliation to the Roman Catholic Church, acceptance of Uniatism, conversion of Turks to Christianity); and eventually of social behaviors (exogamy, cross-cultural relationships, integration or even linguistic assimilation to the host society).
In such a context we can recognize the Mediterranean “confessional ambiguity” that Eric Dursteler has brought out in his work about the Veneto-Ottoman relations and the constructions of identity in the early modern Mediterranean. Assuming that the identity is an entangled process, affected by manifold circumstances, this article attempts to evaluate two correlated factors, generally overlooked in the making of a secular Greek identity within the migrant communities: firstly the interaction with other linguistic groups and with coreligionists acculturated to the host society; secondly, the gradual weakening of religion in the shaping of identity as a consequence of recurrent practices of religious dissimulation within the Roman Catholic countries.
Bio
Angela Falcetta is a Phd Candidate at the University of Padova (Italy). The dissertation she is currently working on, investigates the multiple ties connecting the Greek-rite communities settled in the central Mediterranean during the Eighteenth century, and the metamorphoses induced in the collective identities of Orthodox migrants by the experience of migration. Ecclesiastical records, several sources of social history and the documents held in the Propaganda Fide Archive and Vatican Secret Archive constitute the base of this research work. She holds a first level degree in Historical documentation sciences and a Master’s degree in Modern History from the University of Florence (Italy). She was awarded a Luigi Einaudi Research Fellowship (2009-2010) and she participated in the Erasmus programme at Oxford University during the spring 2012.
“The Legislative Establishment of State Literary Awards in Greece
during the last Venizelos Government (1928-1932)”
Abstract
Drawing on theoretical insights from the broader fields of sociology of literature, book history and Neo-Marxist criticism, this paper presents some of the findings of my doctoral research, which focuses on the institutionalization and consolidation of Greek State awards in poetry and prose from 1914 to 1940. Despite the internationally proliferation of research on modern literary prizes during the last three decades, the social, economic and ideological function of Greek State awards has so far remained unexamined. My paper is thus an attempt to address such questions, aiming to throw light on specific aspects of the organization and operation of the Greek literary field during the last Venizelos government (1928-1932) and, also, to explore the specific functions of literary prizes in the context of the gradual formation of the contemporary nation-state. The Greek national literary awards were legislatively established at a time when the Greek state was undergoing continuous structural transformation and attempted to control the growing social discontent by stabilizing social welfare policies, strengthening executive authority and propagating nationalist doctrines through cultural and educational institutions. An abundance of hitherto unexplored primary material shows that, in this historical context, State literary prizes were called upon to form the core of a government authorized “national literature”. On the other hand, heated controversies on the selection of prize committee members reveal the efforts of liberal intellectuals to control literary associations and to challenge communist writers, who began to organize themselves more systematically at the same period. The period 1914-1940 presents a unique opportunity to investigate the cultural and social function of literary prizes under radically different constitutional circumstances (constitutional monarchy, presidential republic and authoritarian dictatorship). Those state conditions actually coincide with the three stages during which the prizes were legislatively established. At the first stage (1914-1926) medals and other royal honors were awarded to writers and an Excellence Award in Humanities and the Arts was introduced. At a second stage (1926-1935) the Education Minister, George Papandreou, founded the State Literary Awards, which nevertheless were not awarded before 1935, thus coinciding with the third stage, of monarchical and authoritarian right-wing governments. My paper focuses on the years 1928-1932, when State Awards were included (at the request of some liberal authors) in Venizelos’s broadly reformist program and established by the Law “for the Invigoration of Greek Arts and Literature” (1931). The political overthrow of the Liberals and pressure by some conservative intellectuals led to continuous legislative modifications, which ultimately altered the original nature and purpose of the awards. My paper discusses these developments as revealed by official documents which present various aspects of the awards at this stage, including the financial amounts that were originally planned to be channeled in the literary field as well as the specific provisions which would regulate their institutional operation.
Bio
Sokratis Niaros is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Philology/School of Philosophy at the University of Ioannina, Greece. His doctoral thesis focuses on the institutionalization and consolidation of Greek State Awards in poetry and prose from 1914 to 1940. He holds an M.A. in Modern Greek Literature and a B.A. in Medieval and Modern Greek Literature from the University of Ioannina. His research interests include sociology of literature, national cultural policy and book/publishing history.
The Mount Grammos Painters' Contribution in the Formation of a Common Artistic Language in the 17th Century Balkans
Abstract
The painters from the region of Mount Grammos constitute the largest known group of craftsmen in the Balkans in the 17th century. The group currently includes twenty-four artists and more than one hundred works have been attributed to them extending from Greece, Albania and F.Y.R.O.M to Bulgaria and Serbia. However, their work has not been systematically researched so far. Transformations of land ownership in the Ottoman Empire and fiscal changes of the late 16th century impacted profoundly Balkan populations’ social stratification and caused remarkable alterations in wealth distribution among non-Muslims (reaya). Engagement with trade and commerce affected social mobility within Orthodox communities and challenged the horizontally layered structure of the reaya class. As a result, patronage of Christian art underwent significant changes throughout the 17th century in the Balkans. Old Christian aristocracy of the cities fell gradually in decline and new patrons came forth in mountainous villages and small market towns across the Balkan Peninsula. Furthermore, after the confiscation of monastic properties by Selim II in 1568, art commissions in large monastic complexes, such as Mount Athos and Meteora, were impeded by severe financial problems. However, a great number of smaller monasteries, founded during the last decades of the 16th century and therefore not having been subjected to the confiscation of 1568, flourished and started commissioning numerous wall-painted churches and iconostases. The new Orthodox “elites” - the emerging aristocracy of the villages, the wealthy merchants and the newfound monasteries - did not have new artistic priorities; they were primarily interested in demonstrating their achieved status in the socioeconomic scale. As a consequence a common artistic language was gradually formed in the Balkans serving the wishes of the new patrons. The painters from Mount Grammos took advantage of the socioeconomic turbulence of the 17th century and played a significant role in the creation and dissemination of this common artistic language. They showcase a new kind of artist: mainly a villager, who was constantly en route and ready to make long journeys in the Balkans to find commissioners. They were not artists by renaissance standards but rather artisans, who painted frescoes and icons, worked as a wood carvers, goldsmiths or even engravers. Their creations were generally repetitive and lacking originality, but occasionally some of them made conscious attempts to enhance their repertoire by copying engravings from western masters or by introducing selected motifs from Islamic decorative arts in their compositions. The work of this exceptional group of artists is critically discussed for the first time in the proposed paper and is contextualized within the socioeconomic setting of its time. The significance of the group’s contribution is approached from the perspective of Post-Byzantine art history and hence as part of Modern Greece’s past, but also as an extraordinary example of common Balkan heritage.
Bio
Theocharis Tsampouras is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Byzantine Archaeology and Art History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He studied Archaeology (2002) and History (2004) at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and received a master’s degree in Byzantine Art and Archaeology from the same university in 2005. In his doctoral dissertation, which will be completed in the summer of 2013, he is investigating the significance of the wall-paintings created by painters from the region of Mount Grammos in the history of 16th and 17th century Post-byzantine art. He has worked on projects of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki involving excavations, documentation and digitization of collections. He has also published several articles on post-byzantine art of the 17th and the 19th century and presented his work at the Conferences of the Association of Greek Art Historians and the Symposiums of Byzantine Archaeology, organized by the Christian Archaeological Society, of which he is a regular member.
Patriots, cosmopolitans and antiquarians:
The past as a national cause, from 19th century Crete to modern conflicts
Abstract
This paper deals with the parallel threads of colonial politics, nationalism and archaeology in the Cretan State (1898 – 1913), a semi-autonomous regime, established on the island of Crete by the “Great Powers” (Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy). This polity ended 250 years of direct Ottoman rule, on a region inhabited by both Christians – the majority – and Muslims, with the former supporting a thriving Greek nationalist movement. The most significant archaeological projects emerged during that period. However, the excavations were mainly directed by western archaeological missions; their activities resembled the semi-colonial attitudes displayed by the “peacekeeping” forces that were deployed in Crete. At the same time, a local elite of intermediaries had emerged. It incorporated members with multiple attributes, such as former revolutionaries, politicians, clergymen, self-taught archaeologists and collectors of antiquities, who developed a Janus-faced attitude: on one hand, through Greek irredentism directed to the Christian community, they demanded national independence and a nationally “pure” present, heir of an equally “pure” past; on the other hand, an obedient stance towards the occupying forces and their archaeological demands secured their individual and collective interests. Ironically, both approaches above would lead them to clash with the local peasantry, whose behaviour towards antiquities they considered ignorant and non-patriotic. In this paper, I will explore the legacy of a prominent local archaeologist, Joseph Hatzidakis, and I will argue that Cretan State archaeology was a rather disguised case of both colonial and, in a peculiar way, conflict archaeology, born amid intercommunal violence, international military occupation and a nationalist struggle. In my exploration I trace how archaeological practice affected local elites, the rest of the population, the occupiers, and the relationships amongst all the above. Thus, I will demonstrate that the Cretan case is a valuable example, which is of wider relevance, beyond its immediate research fields, such as Modern Greek Studies or Aegean Prehistory. The tactics described will be linked to the management of the past in modern conflicts, with parallels spanning from the Israeli excavations in the hotbed of East Jerusalem to the ways archaeology is used by the Albanian national narrative in post-war Kosovo. Obviously, the approach described above is heavily multidisciplinary. As far as archaeology is concerned, it is focused, but not confined, on the prehistoric, archaic and classical past of Crete. The scholarly production on nationalism, based on historical, sociological and anthropological approaches is explored too; among them, concepts related to the intermingling of national narration and colonialism, play a crucial role in the interpretation of the data collected. Regarding the latter, resources such as the archives of foreign and Greek pioneers of Cretan archaeology and other key persons constitute a valuable resource, which I have mined extensively for this project; notebooks and correspondence portray troubled lives, ideas, identities and socio-political backgrounds. Administrative records, such as meeting minutes of the municipal councils and the Cretan Assembly are also revealing. Moreover, the archaeological news in the Press (Cretan, Greek and foreign) vividly depict the public presentation of archaeology and the associated discussions.
Bio
Vassilis Varouhakis is a postgraduate research student at the Department of Archaeology of the University of Southampton, awarded with a Block Grant Partnership (BGP) by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). He holds a B.A. in History & Archaeology and an M.A. with Distinction in the “Ancient Mediterranean World: History and Archaeology” Postgraduate Study Programme (direction: Prehistoric Archaeology), both from the University of Crete. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation, which deals with the nationalist uses and consumptions of the past, using the island of Crete during the turn of the 20th century as a case study. His research interests include Nationalism and Archaeology, Aegean Prehistory, History of Modern Greece, Public Archaeology, Archaeological Ethnography, Social Archaeology, Identity Politics, History of Archaeology and Pseudoarchaeology.
Last updated 5/3/13