conference program Unframing Hellenism pdf

UN-FRAMING HELLENISM:

GREEK CULTURE AFTER THE CRISIS

The Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand &

The Department of Modern Greek Studies, University of Sydney

4th - 6th December 2012

The University of Sydney

12th Biennial Conference

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Convenors

Ass. Prof. Vrasidas Karalis

Dr. Anthony Dracopoulos

Dr. Panayota Nazou

The Conveners would like to express their gratitude to

The Executive Board of the

Greek Orthodox Community of New South Wales

for their generous financial support and encouragement

ConFerenCe ProGrAM

UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

THE REFECTORY ROOM,

MAIN QUADRANGLE

Registration for three days $140

one day $50

Students and Pensioners

$60 dollars for three days or

$20 for one day

$10 for 1 session

(includes morning tea, coffee, midday meal and afternoon coffee and tea)

$80 conference dinner

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Un-FrAMInG HeLLenIsM:

GreeK CULTUre AFTer THe CrIsIs

To frame means to form, construct, devise, conceive, imagine, picture and finally

to incriminate: Hellenism can be seen through all such angles.

Un-framing Hellenism has as its purpose the de-stereotyping of Greek culture,

the de-mythologisation of its current images and the reconstruction of its

imaginative potential.

Although the Greek crisis seems to have no end in the near future, Greek studies

empower themselves by reconsidering their conceptual paradigms and canonical

readings.

It is becoming obvious that the historicism that has dominated Greek studies is

now obsolete and that the nostalgia for past certainties has proven dangerous.

The need for future-oriented identities gains momentum and sets the conceptual

foundations for new paradigms for self-perception and self-articulation.

Together with culture, modern Greek subjectivity is actively deconstructed and

re-constructed: antiquarian ideas, ethnographic representations and ideological

obsessions are problematised and renegotiated.

As the crisis still rages, it would be useful to map out new images about Greek

culture and formulate new questions about its self-understanding.

The conference will attempt to bring together radical or revisionist ideas about the

position of Greece in the global world and discuss their underpinning philosophies.

This is the central question which we will approach from different methodological

and conceptual vantage points.

Organising committee

Professor Vrasidas Karalis, Dr Anthony Dracopoulos, Dr Panayota Nazou,

Dr Panayiotis Diamadis, Professor Peter Morgan, Dr Elisabeth Kefallinos,

Dr Alfred Vincent

Nikolaos Gyzis, The Spider (1884)

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THe Conveners woULd LIKe To exPress THeIr GrATITUde To

The Modern Greek Studies

Foundation for its generous

support

Athenian Association of

Sydney & NSWThe Greek Consulate of

Sydney and his

Excellency

Mr Stavros Kyrimis

The Embassy of Greece in

Canberra and

his Excellency the

Ambassador

Mr Harry Dafaranos

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 3RD, 2014

6.00 - 7.30

OPENING AT THE CCANESSA LECTURE ROOM

AUSTRALIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE IN ATHENS

MADSEN BUILDING

(entrance from King Street)

Brief Addresses

Professor Duncan Ivison, Dean of Arts Faculty

Mr Harry Dafaranos, his excellency the Ambassador for Greece

Mr Harry Danalis, President of the Greek Orthodox Community of NSW

Professor Gregory Jusdanis, Ohio State University

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4TH, 2014

THe reFeCTorY rooM, MAIn QUAdrAnGLe, UnIversITY oF sYdneY

9.00 am REGISTRATION

SESSION 1 ChAIr: ElENI ElEfthErIS-KOStAKIDI

09.30 - 10.00 Francis Haran, (BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway)

The Greek Financial Crisis: Who Is Responsible?

10.00 - 10.30 George Couvalis, (Flinders University)

Telling The Truth Through Lying About Lying

10.30 - 11.00 Maria Zarimis, (University of New South Wales)

Hellenic Continuity and Nationhood

11.00 - 11.30 Andonis Piperoglou, (La Trobe University)

Reconceptualising early Greek Australia: Entangled allegiances,

shifting loyalties and the formation of an early Greek-Australian

identity

11.30 - 12.00 COFFEE BREAK

SESSION 2 ChAIr: ANthONy DrACOpOulOS

12.00 - 13.00 KEy-NOtE ADDrESS

Professor Gregory Jusdanis (Ohio State University)

Greece via Latin America and Latin America via Greece

13.00 - 14.00 LUNCH BREAK

SESSION 3 ChAIr: MIChAEl tSIANIKAS

14.00 - 14.30 Anthony Dracopoulos, (University of Sydney)

George Seferis’ Hellenism: Unframing and Reframing

14.30 - 15.00 Dimitris Paivanas

Un-framing the Civil War: Literary Prose, Political Identities and

Historical Revisionism in Contemporary Greece

15.00 - 15.30 Vassiliki Rapti (Harvard University)

Either of the Height or of the Depth: Nanos Valaoritis’

De-stereotyping of the “Greeks” in the Time of Crisis

15.30 - 16.00 Anna Dimitriou (University of Technology Sydney)

Comparing Contemporary Greek Australian Writers: Mediators

Between cultures, or desiring something else


16.15 - 17.15 Helen Nickas and Vrasidas Karalis

In Conversation with the poet Antigone Kefala

18.00 - 19.00 She Hawke’s Book Launch By Vrasidas Karalis

Aquamorphia: falling for water

CCANESSA LECTURE ROOM

Madsen Building

ALL WELCOME

END OF THE DAY ONE

NOTE:Each paper should be around 20 minutes allowing

10 minute discussion at the end

http://sydney.edu.au/arts/about/quadrangle.shtml

6

We also like to thank the Modern Greek Studies Foundation for its generous support

And

Thoanian Association

And

The Greek Consulate of Sydney and his Excellency Mr Stavros Kyrimis

The Embassy of Greece in Canberra and his Excellency the Ambassador Mr Harry Dafaranos

OPENING

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6TH, 2014


FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5TH, 2014



SESSION 4 ChAIr: MArIA pAlAKtSOglOu

09.30 - 10.00 Andreas Triantafillou (The University of Edinburgh)

Unframing C. P. Cavafy: The Case of Lou Harrison’s Scenes from

Cavafy

10.00 - 10.30 Michael Tsianikas, (Flinders University)

Καβάφης 400 Μ.Χ: Κοσμοπολιτισμός /Κοσμοθεωρία

10.30 - 11.00 Ryan Patrick Preston , (Tan Tao University, Viet-Nam)

The International Scope of Photis Kontoglou’s Worldview

11.00 - 11.30 Przemysław Marciniak (University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland)

Bloodthirsty doctors, underground mice and annoying scholars:

Humour in the 12th century Byzantine satires


SESSION 5 ChAIr: VrASIDAS KArAlIS

12.00 - 13.00 pm KEy-NOtE ADDrESS

Professor Nikolas Kompridis (Australian Catholic University):

“Multiple Pasts/Alternative Futures: Reclaiming ‘Greece’ after the

Tyranny of Austerity


SESSION 6 ChAIr: pANAyOtA NAzOu

14.00 - 14.30 Cheryl Simpson (Flinders University)

Kendimata And National Identity: Is It All In The Past?

14.30 - 15.00 Antonios Litinas /Marianthi Kosmarikou, (Flinders University)

Blogging as an Assessment Tool in Higher Education

15.00 - 15.30 Maria Palaktsoglou/Katherine Sutcliffe/Maria Shialis: (Flinders University)

Re-framing the ephemeral: Reports on the contemporary

migration experience through blogging

15.30 - 16.00 Patricia Panagiota Koromvokis & Ioannis Kalaitzidis

(Macquarie University)

The relation between Social Problem Solving abilities and L2

Communicative Competence Differences between university

students and immigrants.

16.00 - 16.30 Erma Vassiliou, (Australian National University)

Language change in Byzantine Greek: examples from the texts of

Anna Comnena’s Alexiad

16.30 - 17.00 COFFEE BREAK AND RELOCATION OF THE CONFERENCE

17.15 - 17.45 SpECIAl EVENt OrgANISED IN COllABOrAtION wIth SyDNEy IDEAS

Public Media and Social Crisis

Helen Vatsikopoulos (panel chair)

George Megalogenis, Phil Kafcaloudes, Peter Manning, Jorge Sotirios

Law School Foyer, Level 2, Sydney Law School

Eastern Avenue, The University of Sydney

CONFERENCE DINNER (details to be announced during the Conference)


SESSION 7 ChAIr: AlfrED VINCENt

09.00 - 09.30 Vassilis Adrahtas

Kazantzakis the Cosmo-Hellene, or ο αφορισμός του Ελληνικού

09.30 - 10.00 Zdenko Zlatar, (University of Sydney)

Nikos Kazantzakis and El Greco

10.00 - 10.30 Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos, (La Trobe

University)

‘Nothing in between: Crisis, vision and death in the art of Goya

and Michelakakis

10.30-10:45 COFFEE BREAK

SESSION 8 ChAIr: pANAyOtA NAzOu

10.45 - 11.15 Maria Herodotou, (Latrobe University)

Μυθοποίηση και απομυθοποίηση του Ελληνισμούσε κυπριακά πεζογραφήματα

11.15 - 11.45 Elizabeth Kefallinos, (Macquarie University)

The List that was Never Given: The Jews of Zakynthos and their

survival

11.45 - 12.15 Dimitri Gonis, (Latrobe University)

Greek Irredentism: The Great Idea and Slavo-Macedonism

12.15 - 12.45 Anna Chatzinikolaou (University of Sydney)

Un-framing Hellenism: A Diasporic response


SESSION 9 ChAIr: ASS. ElIzABEth KEfAllINOS

13.30 - 13.50 Panayiota Nazou, (University of Sydney)

Un-framing politics: The Cultural Policies of Melina Mercouri, as

the minister for culture

13.50 - 14.10 Eleni Eleftherias-Kostakidis, (University of Sydney)

Unframing Hellenism, Phillipos Tsitos, Unfair Wolrd

14.10 - 14.30 Sophia Sakellis, (University of Sydney)

Red Hulk: A Modern Greek Tragedy of Dysfunction and Alienation

14.30 - 14.50 Konstandina Dounis

Of journeys, mother/lands and old photographs….

Snapshots of Hellenism through the prism of Greek-Australian

women’s writings.


SESSION 10 frIENDS IN CrISIS: ANzACS IN thE hEllENIC wOrlD OrgANISED By Dr pANAyIOtIS DIAMADIS

15.00 - 15.30 Vicken Babkenian (Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide

Studies)

‘Anzac Angels – Anzacs in the relief movement for survivors of the

Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocides

15.30 - 16.00 Michael Bendon

‘The Forgotten Flotilla: The Craft of Heroes, Crete 1941’





http://sydney.edu.au/arts/about/quadrangle.shtmlhttp://sydney.edu.au/arts/about/quadrangle.shtml

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16.00 - 16.30 Panayiotis Diamadis, University of Technology, Sydney

‘Friends in times of Crisis: Anzacs and Hellenism’

16.30 - 17.00 Takis Kozokos, Democritus University of Thrace

‘Το σχέδιο μνημείων στην αρχαιότητα με αναφορές στα μνημεία της Ακροπόλεως’ (the design of Memorials and Monuments in

antiquity) (in Greek)

17.00 - 18.00 MGSAANZ GENERAL MEETING

18:00 - 18:40 CONCERT WITH GREEK MUSIC

Organised by Eleni-Eleftherias Kostakidi

KΑΦΕ GREKOGeorgios Spanos: Vocals, Guitars/bass/oud,

Γιώργιος Σπανός: Φωνή, Κιθάρα, Μπάσο, Ούτι

Paloma Soulos: Viola, vocals,

Παναγιώτα Σούλου: Βιόλα, Φωνή

Christina Bacchiella: Percussion,

Χριστίνα Μπακιέλλα : Kρουστά

Anna Papoulia: Vocals, Keyboards

Άννα Παπούλια: Φωνή, Ηλεκτρικό Πιάνο

Vocals: Mersina Papantoniou

Φωνή: Μερσίνα Παπαντωνίου

Sound Engineer/PA: Christos Kyvetos-Kostakidis

Τεχνικός ήχου: Χρίστος Κυβετός-Κωστακίδης

sPeCIAL evenTs

HELEN NICKAS AND VRASIDAS KARALIS

IN CONVERSATION wITH THE POET ANTIGONE KEFALA

Thursday December 4th, 2015

4.15-5.15 pm, Refectory Room

Antigone Kefala was born in 1935 at Braila, Romania, of Greek

parents. After the war her family returned to Greece, before

emigrating to New Zealand in 1951. She graduated with an Arts

degree from Victoria University, Wellington, and subsequently

completed an MA there in 1960. In the early 1960s she moved

to New South Wales, working first as a teacher of English as

a second language, and subsequently as an administrator at

the University of New South Wales, and as an arts administrator

with the Australia Council. Kefala began publishing her poetry

in Australian literary journals in the early 1960s, and her first

collection, The Alien, appeared in 1973. Her poetry often revolves

around the experience of alienation and difference, and the

problems of language and meaning, and she has been widely

recognised as an important voice on the migrant experience in

modern Australia. Besides poetry she has written short fiction,

novellas and novels – including The Island (1984) – as well as

essays and autobiographical works, including a selection from her

diaries: Sydney Journals, 1970–2000 (2008).

SHE HAwKE’S

AquAmorphiA: FALLING FOR wATER

BOOK LAUNCH BY VRASIDAS KARALIS AND HELEN NICKAS

Thursday December 4th, 2015

5.30 for 6.00pm, Ccanessa Lecture Room,

Madsen Building

Shé Mackenzie Hawke is an award winning poet, and trans-

disciplinary scholar currently attached to the Research School

of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Her work

has appeared in several academic journals, and her poetry has

SPECIAL EVENTS Events of the 12th Biennial Conference on Modern Greek Studies

THURSDAY DECEMBER 4TH, 2015 4.15-5.15 PM

REFECTORY ROOM

Helen Nickas and Vrasidas Karalis In Conversation with the poet Antigone Kefala

Antigone Kefala was born in 1935 at Braila, Romania, of Greek parents. After the war her family returned to Greece, before emigrating to New Zealand in 1951. She graduated with an Arts degree from Victoria University, Wellington, and subsequently completed an MA there in 1960. In the early 1960s she moved to New South Wales, working first as a teacher of English as a second language, and subsequently as an administrator at the University of New South Wales, and as an arts administrator with the Australia Council. Kefala began publishing her poetry in Australian literary journals in the early 1960s, and her first collection, The Alien, appeared in 1973. Her poetry often revolves around the experience of alienation and difference, and the problems of language and meaning, and she has been widely recognised as an important voice on the migrant experience in modern Australia. Besides poetry she has written short fiction, novellas and novels – including The Island (1984) – as well as essays and autobiographical works, including a selection from her diaries: Sydney Journals, 1970–2000 (2008).

SPECIAL EVENTS Events of the 12th Biennial Conference on Modern Greek Studies

THURSDAY DECEMBER 4TH, 2015 4.15-5.15 PM

REFECTORY ROOM

Helen Nickas and Vrasidas Karalis In Conversation with the poet Antigone Kefala

Antigone Kefala was born in 1935 at Braila, Romania, of Greek parents. After the war her family returned to Greece, before emigrating to New Zealand in 1951. She graduated with an Arts degree from Victoria University, Wellington, and subsequently completed an MA there in 1960. In the early 1960s she moved to New South Wales, working first as a teacher of English as a second language, and subsequently as an administrator at the University of New South Wales, and as an arts administrator with the Australia Council. Kefala began publishing her poetry in Australian literary journals in the early 1960s, and her first collection, The Alien, appeared in 1973. Her poetry often revolves around the experience of alienation and difference, and the problems of language and meaning, and she has been widely recognised as an important voice on the migrant experience in modern Australia. Besides poetry she has written short fiction, novellas and novels – including The Island (1984) – as well as essays and autobiographical works, including a selection from her diaries: Sydney Journals, 1970–2000 (2008).

THURSDAY DECEMBER 4TH, 2014 5.30 FOR 6.00PM

CCANESSA LECTURE ROOM Madsen Building

She Hawke’s

Aquamorphia: falling for water Book Launch By Vrasidas Karalis and Helen Nickas

Shé Mackenzie Hawke is an award winning poet, and trans-disciplinary scholar currently attached to the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Her work has appeared in several academic journals, and her poetry has been widely anthologised. In 2007, she co-authored Tender Muse (Picaro Press) with Carolyn van Langenberg. Her novel in verse Depot Girl (Picaro Press) appeared in 2008 and was nominated for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Literary Award in the same year. Her research interests include poetry,

12 13

been widely anthologised. In 2007, she co-authored Tender Muse

(Picaro Press) with Carolyn van Langenberg. Her novel in verse

Depot Girl (Picaro Press) appeared in 2008 and was nominated

for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and shortlisted for the

Colin Roderick Literary Award in the same year. Her research

interests include poetry, Greek mythology and psychoanalysis,

and the cross-currents between environmental, economic

and socio-cultural flows and values of water. She has recently

returned to her hometown Canberra after thirty years away and

lives with her two cats and dog. Her adult daughter, also an

author, lives and writes from Italy.

Leonie Jackson holds a Bachelor of Visual Art from Southern

Cross University, NSW, Australia, and has been an art practitioner

all her life. She has been collaborating with Shé on the theme of

water for the last decade. She is the recipient of the note-able

Laske Award for visual art from SCU (2009) and was a founding

member of Station St Studios, Mullumbimby. She is currently a

member of c.a.s.e. , a not-for-profit contemporary community art

group. Her paintings explore people’s relationships with water via

visual and textual collaboration.

SYDNEY IDEAS - PUBLIC MEDIA AND SOCIAL CRISIS

Friday December 5th, 2015

5.00pm - 6.30pm, Law School Foyer

Level 2, Sydney Law School

Eastern Avenue, The University of Sydney

An event in the 12th Conference of Modern Greek Studies, at the

University of Sydney

How has the Australian media responded to international global

crises such as the financial crisis of 2009, ‘Islamophobia’, the

world-wide increase in refugees and asylum-seekers and the

recent Ebola outbreak?

A panel of experienced journalists who have reported widely on

international issues will discuss the visual and verbal discourses

used by Australian media to cover major crises at home and

overseas and the impact on public debate.

Panellists:

Helen Vatsikopoulos (panel chair) is a Walkley Award winning

journalist who has worked for the Australian Broadcasting

Corporation and its international station, the Australia Network,

and for the Special Broadcasting Service. In a career spanning

27 years she has specialized in International Reporting and

has covered history-changing events like the fall of the Berlin

Wall, the collapse of Communism, the Rwandan Genocide,

the HIV-Aids crisis in West Papua, the Sri Lankan Civil War, the

assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, and the Bali Bombings–among

many others. Her reporting on the collapse of the USSR won

her a coveted Walkley award.

George Megalogenis is an author and journalist. He has 28 years’

experience in the media, including over a decade in the Federal

Parliamentary press gallery. He is a regular panelist on ABC TV’s

The Insiders. He is the author of Faultlines, The Longest Decade

and Quarterly Essay 40: Trivial Pursuit – Leadership and the End

of the Reform Era. His latest book The Australian Moment won

the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and the

2012 Walkley Award for Non-fiction.

Phil Kafcaloudes is an Australian writer, journalist and broadcaster

who previously hosted international breakfast show on the

ABC’s Radio Australia network. In 2013 Phil was given a Highly

Commended in the category of International Radio Personality

of the Year in the Asian Broadcasting Union awards.

Peter Manning has had a distinguished 30-year career in

journalism. He had been Head of Current Affairs at the Seven

Television Network (1997-2000), Head of ABC Radio National

(1993-5) and head of ABC Television News and Current Affairs

(1989-92). Between 1985 and 1989 he was Executive Producer

of Four Corners. He has a Doctorate of Philosophy examining

representations of Arabic and Muslim people in Sydney’s media.

Jorge Sotirios has travelled the globe as travel journalist

covering the Arts, the Environment, Politics and Culture and

has written for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian

Literary Review. He has travelled to 30 countries working as a

foreign correspondent.

Cost: Free and open to all with online

registration requested

RSVP: Register online now by entering

your details at the bottom of the page.

Click ‘register’ once and wait for the

screen to refresh. You will receive

a confirmation email in your inbox

shortly after.

Contact: Sydney Ideas

E [email protected]

T 9351 2943

More info:

www.sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas

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ABsTrACTs - key note speakers

GREGORY JUSDANIS

Ohio State Univers i ty

Greece via Latin America and Latin America via Greece

In my presentation I will approach Greece by way of Latin America and vice versa. By

comparing two unrelated societies my overall aim is to reflect on our attachment to particular

views of the world and of ourselves. Specifically I will address this topic by looking at how

representative authors in Greece and Latin American have dealt with the overwhelming

cultural influence of Europe upon their respective societies. I will begin by examining

how Adamantios Korais called on Greeks, prior to their struggle for independence from the

Ottoman Empire, to emulate models in Europe, especially France. I then move to Argentina

by examining a key text in Latin American culture, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Facundo:

Civilization and Barbarism (1845), which also put forward that Argentines copy developments

and institutions in Europe, specifically France and England. Later authors rebelled against

this emphasis on copying of external developments. Georgos Theotokas in his manifesto of

1929, To Elefthero Pneuma, argued that Greeks should engage constructively with European

literature so as to export their own and not just import what was published abroad. At roughly

the same time the Brazilian author and critic Oswald de Andrade declared in “Manifesto

Anthropofágo” that Brazilians, rather than just passively receiving what was shipped to them,

should ingest the world’s cultural heritage in an act of symbolic cannibalism. Central to both

manifestos was the stress on reciprocity and recognition of the peripheral society by the world

at large. General questions that my lecture will address: What do we gain by engaging in a

comparison of societies not sharing borders, traditions, or history? Can there be meaningful

comparison without a common source? Does such a strategy help us think through our

Eurocentrism or Americanocentrism? What are the risks and benefits of such a reading?

CVGregory Jusdanis, Distinguished Humanities Professor, teaches Modern Greek and

Comparative Literature at the Ohio State University. He is the author of The Poetics of Cavafy,

Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture. Inventing National Literature, The Necessary Nation,

Fiction Agonistes. In Defense of Literature. A Tremendous Thing. Friendship from the Iliad to

the Internet just appeared. He has served as visiting professor at the University of Michigan,

Universidad del Rosario (Bogota), Universidad de Cartagena, Universidad de Buenos Aires,

and Kwara State University (Nigeria). He has received fellowships from the J. S. Guggenheim

Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholar, the American Council of Learned

Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

NIKOLAS KOMPRIDIS

Austral ian cathol ic Univers i ty

“Multiple Pasts/Alternative Futures: Reclaiming ‘Greece’ after the

Tyranny of Austerity”

It is hard to see a future beyond the tyranny of austerity. But there must be some vision of a

future that might be different not only from the neo-liberal “vision” which has blinded much

of the world, and traumatised some particular parts of it, but also from the equally blind

“vision” that was in place before it. There is no going back to pre-crisis Greece, or pre-crisis

Europe. But to what should a post-crisis Greece aspire that would open it up to different

articulations of its past and alternative disclosures of its possibilities?

CVNikolas Kompridis is Research Professor in Philosophy and Political Thought and Director

of the Institute for Social Justice. He is the author of The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought

(Bloomsbury, 2014) Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future (MIT,

2006), Philosophical Romanticism (Routledge, 2006), and over 50 articles on a very broad

spectrum of topics in philosophy and political theory. Originally trained as a musician (the

University of Toronto and Yale University), he was the founder and director of the Canadian

new music ensemble, Sound Pressure, during which time he worked with some of the

world’s leading composers – Frederic Rzewski, Martin Bresnick, Louis Andriessen, and David

Lang, among others. After a decade long-career in music he was drawn into an academic

career, inspired by the Critical Theory tradition, which eventually took him to Frankfurt,

where he worked with Jürgen Habermas as a postdoctoral fellow in the philosophy

department at J.W. Goethe University. Drawing on the traditions of Critical Theory,

Political Theory, Philosophical Romanticism, and American Pragmatism, his work has been

concerned with rethinking the meaning of reason, critique, normativity, and agency from

the perspective of his conceptions of “reflective disclosure” and “receptivity” (in Critique and

Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, and other writings).

16

In my presentation I will approach Greece by way of Latin America and vice versa. By comparing two unrelated societies my overall aim is to reflect on our attachment to particular views of the world and of ourselves. Specifically I will address this topic by looking at how representative authors in Greece and Latin American have dealt with the overwhelming cultural influence of Europe upon their respective societies. I will begin by examining how Adamantios Korais called on Greeks, prior to their struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, to emulate models in Europe, especially France. I then move to Argentina by examining a key text in Latin American culture, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (1845), which also put forward that Argentines copy developments and institutions in Europe, specifically France and England. Later authors rebelled against this emphasis on copying of external developments. Georgos Theotokas in his manifesto of 1929, To Elefthero Pneuma, argued that Greeks should engage constructively with European literature so as to export their own and not just import what was published abroad. At roughly the same time the Brazilian author and critic Oswald de Andrade declared in “Manifesto Anthropofágo” that Brazilians, rather than just passively receiving what was shipped to them, should ingest the world’s cultural heritage in an act of symbolic cannibalism. Central to both manifestos was the stress on reciprocity and recognition of the peripheral society by the world at large. General questions that my lecture will address: What do we gain by engaging in a comparison of societies not sharing borders, traditions, or history? Can there be meaningful comparison without a common source? Does such a strategy help us think through our Eurocentrism or Americanocentrism? What are the risks and benefits of such a reading?

CV

Gregory Jusdanis, Distinguished Humanities Professor, teaches Modern Greek and Comparative Literature at the Ohio State University. He is the author of The Poetics of Cavafy, Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture. Inventing National Literature, The Necessary Nation, Fiction Agonistes. In Defense of Literature. A Tremendous Thing. Friendship from the Iliad to the Internet just appeared. He has served as visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Universidad del Rosario (Bogota), Universidad de Cartagena, Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Kwara State University (Nigeria). He has received fellowships from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholar,

17

the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Nikolas Kompridis Australian catholic University

“Multiple Pasts/Alternative Futures: Reclaiming ‘Greece' after the Tyranny of Austerity”

It is hard to see a future beyond the tyranny of austerity. But there must be some vision of a future that might be different not only from the neo-liberal “vision” which has blinded much of the world, and traumatised some particular parts of it, but also from the equally blind “vision” that was in place before it. There is no going back to pre-crisis Greece, or pre-crisis Europe. But to what should a post-crisis Greece aspire that would open it up to different articulations of its past and alternative disclosures of its possibilities?

CV

Nikolas Kompridis is Research Professor in Philosophy and Political Thought and Director of the Institute for Social Justice. He is the author of The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought (Bloomsbury, 2014) Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future (MIT, 2006), Philosophical Romanticism (Routledge, 2006), and over 50 articles on a very broad spectrum of topics in philosophy and political theory. Originally trained as a musician (the University of Toronto and Yale University), he was the founder and director of the Canadian new music ensemble, Sound Pressure, during which time he worked with some of the world's leading composers – Frederic Rzewski, Martin Bresnick, Louis Andriessen, and David Lang, among others. After a decade long-career in music he was drawn into an academic career, inspired by the Critical Theory tradition, which eventually took him to Frankfurt, where he worked with Jürgen Habermas as a postdoctoral fellow in the philosophy department at J.W. Goethe University. Drawing on the traditions of Critical Theory, Political Theory, Philosophical Romanticism, and American Pragmatism, his work has been concerned with rethinking the meaning of reason, critique, normativity, and agency from the perspective of his conceptions of “reflective disclosure” and “receptivity” (in Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, and other writings).

16 17

in crisis. In Kalymniou’s book, from its very title to the execution of the whole collection, a

number of Greco-Hellenic concepts are dealt with in a radical way. Kalymniou himself being

of Hellenic descent has been in constant dialogue with a great number of other cultures

and civilisations (past and present), religious practices and beliefs, philosophical movements

and ideologies, literary works, etc. to mention only a few, with the intention to question and

un-frame a great number of Greco-Hellenic concepts, including “ellinokentrikotita”. The

poet’s aphoristic attitude seems to have been inspired/influenced in a creative way by the

work and philosophy of the great Portuguese writer Fernardo Pessoa among others and

especially by his posthumous work, which he was working on for more than 35 years, Livro

do Desasossego by Bernardo Soares (being one of his heteronyms), which was first published

in 1982. Ten years later, in 1991 four different English translations of the work were published

by Richard Zenith, Iain Watson, Alfred Mac Adam and Margaret Jull Costa, all of whom

Portuguese word in the title “desasossego”. The title was either Book of Disquiet or Book of

Disquietute; hence the title of Kalymniou’s collection with a twist. Pessoa’s two-volume book

was translated first by Maria Papadima and published in Greek under the title Το βιβλίο της

ανησυχίας in 2007-2008 by Exandas Editions, that is 3-4 years after Kalymniou’s collection

was written, although it was published a few years later. Kalymniou’s inventive creation of the

poignant word “ανησυχασμός” definitely seems to have proven his ingenuity as a master of

the Greek language’s enormous expressive ability, serving of course his own purposes.

FRANCIS HARAN BI Norwegian Business School

Leaders or Followers: Who Bears the Burden of Responsibility for the Greek Financial Crisis?

My paper considers the Greek financial crisis from the standpoint of Intercultural

Communication, a discipline in the modern Business School which holds that the beliefs,

values and expectations of business cultures can be learned and applied to avoid costly

misunderstandings. Leadership is a key variable in Intercultural Communication studies. A

fundamental principle of western leadership practice states that if leaders wish to effectively

influence their followers, they must first find out about their followers. By applying this

principle leaders know not only what expectations they can have of their followers but also

what expectations their followers may have of them. When European leaders admitted

Greece to the EEC in 1981 and then to the Eurozone in 2001, the two decisions that paved

the way for the Greek financial crisis in 2009, they did not apply this basic leadership principle.

These two critical decisions, that is to say, were taken without reference to Greek leadership

expectations. My paper argues that if European leaders had been less absorbed by their ideal

of a United States of Europe and more accurately informed about the Modern Greek culture,

then the Greek financial crisis would have been avoided and the Greeks would now be well

down the road towards becoming successful Europeans.

ABsTrACTs

VASSILIS ADRAHTASHellenic Inst i tute of Sydney

Kazantzakis the Cosmo-Hellene, or ο αφορισμός του ΕλληνικούIn the 19th century the Neo-Hellenic reached a state of maturity thanks to the work of

Adamantios Korais –who managed to become European by being Hellenic. In the 20th

century the Neo-Hellenic attained its saturation through the work of Nikos Kazantzakis –who

accomplished Cosmo-topia through Helleno-topia. In the 21st century it seems the Hellenic

has no other historical destination to strive or wish for, since in a way Kazantzakis exemplified

its finality and finalisation. This paper, however, aspires to open up an imaginative space that

would allow one to welcome the era of the Hyper-Hellenic.

VICKEN BABKENIANAustral ian Inst i tute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

‘Anzac Angels – Anzacs in the relief movement for survivors of the Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocides

At the same time as Australian troops landed at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, another event of

historical importance was beginning: the Armenian Genocide. The Gallipoli landings took

place one day after the mass arrest of Armenian leaders in Istanbul, the beginning of the

genocide. One group who remembered the Armenians, Assyrians and Hellenes are a handful

of Australians who were at the forefront of the relief effort, yet their stories have been largely

hidden. For example, Edith Glanville from Haberfield, Sydney, lost her son Leigh, from the 1st

Battalion, who died in battle at Gallipoli.

DR MICHAEL BENDON Independent Mar ine Archeologist

Independent Marine Archeologist

“The Forgotten Flotilla” represents Dr Bendon’s most recent research into two British World

War II wrecks located off-shore from the ancient site of Phalasarna. After considerable

research, he discovered these craft to be Tank Landing Craft Mk1, prototype vessels developed

by the British that were first deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean in 1941 and provided

support in the Mediterranean campaigns. Australian troops made a significant contribution to

the Battle of Crete and participation of Australians in the Mediterranean Theatre. The Greek

campaign and the Battle of Crete have forged an enduring link between Greece and Australia.

ANNA CHATzINIKOLAOUUnivers i ty of Sydney

Un-Framing Hellenism: A Diasporic Response

The aim of this paper is to closely examine one of the recent poetic collections of the Greek-

Australian poet Dean Kalymniou entitled Ανησυχασμός, published in 2010, which is dealing

with a number of issues regarding the very concept of Hellenism in crisis in a globalised world

18 19

GEORGE COUVALISFl inders Univers i ty

Telling The Truth Through Lying About Lying

The ancient writer Lucian is well known for satirising religious and philosophical frauds

and hypocrites. His True Stories (Alethon Diigimaton) is in part a parody of obscurantist

philosophical allegories, like Plato’s allegory of the cave. Yet he begins it by telling us that he is

more honest than all the other tale-tellers because everything he says is a lie. I discuss how he

evades the famous liar paradox to tell the truth about the philosophical/religious obscurantism

involved in allegory. Unlike some interpreters, I argue Lucian is not a post-modernist. He

would have regarded post-modernism as another form of obscurantism.

PANAYIOTIS DIAMADISUnivers i ty of Technology, Sydney

Friends in Crisis: Anzacs and Hellenism

Across numerous conflicts in the first half of the 20th century, Australians and New Zealanders

were at the side of Hellenism: World Wars One and Two, the Asia Minor Campaign (1919-1922),

the relief efforts after the Hellenic, Armenian and Assyrian Genocides and the Civil War (1946-

1949). Beyond their battlefield record, these Anzacs and others from the Antipodes provided

substantial practical and moral support for a people going through successive major crises.

ANTHONY DRACOPOULOS,Univers i ty of Technology, Sydney

Seferis’ Hellenism: Un-framing and Re-framing

Seferis’ work has been regularly used as a frame of reference to discuss processes of

modernization in a peripheral country like Greece or to explore the aesthetic parameters of Greek

modernism. For some critics, he was successful in building an aesthetic system which maintains

an equilibrium between past and present and clearly articulates aspects of “Greekness” which

continue to resonate in contemporary Greece. For others, his views have restricted the scope

of Greek modernism. Seferis undeniably played a significant role in setting the pace for literary

developments in Greece in the 1930s. He constructed a comprehensive edifice with systematic

views on Greek language, literary tradition, the classical period and Greece’s relationship to

Europe. His program of modernization was articulated at a critical time, when Hellenism seemed

to have shrunk within the confines of the Greek nation-state. It is a program of continuities,

symmetries and balances and not of ruptures, determined by historical conjuncture and his own

conservative temperament.

This paper aims to re-examine Seferis’ role in Greek modernism by exploring the key determinants

of his program within the context of alternative proposals and recent critical discussions.

ANNA DIMITRIOUUnivers i ty of Technology, Sydney

Comparing Contemporary Greek Australian writers: Mediators between cultures, or desiring something else?

Dispersed migrant writers, according to Stuart Hall, who know that they will never return to

their original homeland, but instead belong to two worlds, represent cultures of hybridity

which can negotiate ‘distinctly novel types of identity.’ In this paper I will compare how the

traditional Greek Australian writers, Styllianos Charkianakis and Dean Kalimnios, and the

non-traditional writers Fotini Epanomitis, Antigone Kefala and Christos Tsiolkas negotiate

their bicultural experiences, how they position themselves in relation to their communal

beginnings, and how they explore their emerging sense of selfhood. Do those from the

second generation of dispersed migrants writers differ markedly from those who belong

to the first generation, how do they imagine Hellenism, and what type of anxiety does this

negotiation create for the writers themselves?

KONSTANDINA DOUNISLa Trobe Univers i ty

Of journeys, mother/lands and old photographs….

Snapshots of Hellenism through the prism of Greek-Australian women’s writings.

Although first–generation Greek immigrant writings are persistently aligned with notions of

nostalgia for the longed for homeland, a closer reading of this body of literature – particularly

that which emanates from Greek-Australian women writers – serves to unhinge this assumption.

Moreover, first-generation women writers have been quietly un-framing Hellenism long before

the current crisis, evidence of this ‘de-stereotyping’ readily traced back through half a century

of literary output.These women survived the horrors of the World War, the subsequent Greek

Civil War, only to find themselves fighting for survival within that crippling social amalgam

of poverty and patriarchy, the Greek dowry system. Their emigration entailed negligible

choice. The further spectre of patriarchy within the parameters of Australia’s Greek Diaspora,

particularly acute in the 1950s and 60s, ensured that their snapshots of Greece entail a fusion

of perspicacity and scathing commentary, interlaced with a deeply resonating sadness. Their

second-generation daughters, born in the Antipodes and writing primarily in English, tend to

align themselves with the concept of a real or imagined Greece, their writings reflecting a

more convoluted cultural perspective, fluid in focus and outline. Through a revisionist reading,

ever fortified by Adrienne Rich’s assertion of the need to venture ‘beyond the present tense’,

this paper seeks to re-view first and second generation Greek-Australian women’s writings,

highlighting their collective challenge to Hellenism and its constructs.

20 21

ELENI ELEFTHERIAS-KOSTAKIDISUnivers i ty of Sydney

Unframing Hellenism: Philippos Tsitos’ film Unfair World

The Film Unfair World (Αδικος Κοσμος) was released in 2011 by Greek Film Maker Phillipos Tsitos.

The screenplay, which been written by Tsitos in collaboration with Dora Masklavanou, cracks the

stereotyped view of Greeks as fun loving and lazy ‘Zorba types’ while addressing the issue of the

economic crisis in a novel way. Therefore it ‘un-frames’ this preconception of Greeks. It is not

the story of those in power but rather represents that of the ‘un-storied’ people of Greece who

suffer and have no hope of salvation while expressing their high sense of justice and morality.

MARIA HERODOTOU / ΜΑρίΑ ΗρΟδΟΤΟυLa Trobe Univers i ty

Μυθοποίηση και απομυθοποίηση του Ελληνισμού σε κυπριακά πεζογραφήματαΟ τρόπος που οι λογοτέχνες αντιλαμβάνονται τον Ελληνισμό συνδέεται στενά με τις έννοιες

του έθνους και του εθνικισμού, έννοιες που είναι μεταβλητές στο χρόνο και την ιστορική

στιγμή. Χαρακτηρίζονται από πολυμορφία και εξαρτώνται από τη δικαιολογία την οποία

προτείνουν για επίτευξη των εθνικών στόχων. Στην ανακοίνωση αυτή θα χρησιμοποιηθεί η

λογοτεχνία ως μαρτυρία, γιατί αναμφίβολα αποτελεί μια πηγή μέσα από την οποία μπορούμε

να αντλήσουμε στοιχεία για την κοινωνική κατάσταση, τις κοινωνικές διαθέσεις, στάσεις και

ιδεολογίες μιας δεδομένης ιστορικής στιγμής. Αν μάλιστα η ιστορική αυτή στιγμή συνδέεται

με κάποια μορφή κρίσης, είτε πολιτκή, είτε οικονομική, μάς παρέχει τη δυνατότητα να δούμε

τις κοινωνικές επιπτώσεις, την ιδεολογική σύγχυση και τον (πιθανό) επαναπροσδιορισμό των

ιδεολογιών, κυρίως όσον αφορά τους Έλληνες της Κύπρου και τη σχέση τους με το ελλαδικό

κέντρο και τον Ελληνισμό γενικότερα. Αν και είναι γνωστό ότι η Κύπρος σήμερα –όπως

και η Ελλάδα- δοκιμάζεται από οικονομική κρίση, η φάση αυτή είναι πολύ πρόσφατη για

να εκφραστεί μέσα από τη λογοτεχνία. Έτσι η ανακοίνωση επικεντρώνεται σε έργα που

δημιουργήθηκαν μετά την πολιτική κρίση του 1974. Πιο συγκεκριμένα επικεντρώνεται σε

μυθιστορήματα της Αγγελικής Σμυρλή, του Γιάννη Κατσούρη, του Νίκου Ορφανίδη και του

Λεύκιου Ζαφειρίου. Εξετάζεται ο τρόπος με τον οποίο οι συγγραφείς αυτοί μυθοποιούν την

κοινωνική «πραγματικότητα» και κατά πόσο αυτή η μυθοποίηση είναι αποτέλεσμα μιας

υποκειμενικής προσδοκίας για το έθνος. Εξετάζεται ακόμη, κατά πόσο η κρίση επιφέρει

κάποια ρήξη στις σχέσεις των Ελλήνων και αναπροσαρμογή της εθνικής ταυτότητας μέσα από

την υπέρβαση του εθνικισμού και την αντικατάστασή του με μια περισσότερο διεθνιστική

ιδεολογία που τους συνδέει με το σύγχρονο κόσμο.

DIMITRIS GONISLa Trobe Univers i ty

Greek Irredentism: The Great Idea and Slavo-Macedonism

The Greater Greece, first envisaged by Feraios with his Hellenic Republic (1797), and later

propounded by Koletis (1844) would first have to address the heterogeneity of its population.

An integral part of this vision was Macedonia which in the 19th century was a polyethnic and

polyglot place in which the Slavic element predominated. It was this element that would

become the greatest stumbling block of Greek irredentism right up to the 1923 Treaty of

Lausanne. The establishment of an independent Greek State in 1832 and the emerging tug-

of-war over Macedonia inevitably produced an ethno linguistic separatism amongst Macedo-

Bulgarians who felt a special affinity for the land and who resented all contenders of their

homeland. By 1870, a Bulgarian Exarchate was established and separatist tendencies were

on the rise. It was around this time that we also have the first references to ‘Macedonists’ who

claimed to be descendants of Alexander but at the same time ‘pure Slavs’. These Macedo-

Bulgarians sought to promote a narrative of their separateness by challenging the Greek

interpretation of their history which they rejected along with the imposition of the Greek Church

and the Greek language. Having said that, it was Greek cultural and ecclesiastical arrogance,

and the systematic disenfranchisement of the Macedonia’s Slavic population, from both

history and the fate of Macedonia, that ultimately led to the emergence of Slavo-Macedonism

in the form of an anti or mis-Hellenism. This lecture will focus on the emergence of the first

‘Macedonists’ and the subsequent development of Slavo-Macedonism in the second and third

quarters of the 19th century. It will also examine the role of the Patriarchate in the emergence

of ‘militant’ Macedonism. Finally, it will examine the period between the Balkans Wars and

Metaxas dictatorship and its impact on subsequent generations of Slavo-Macedonians.

ELIzABETH KEFALLINOSMacquar ie Univers i ty

The List that was Never Given: The Jews of Zakynthos and their complete survival!

Researching the sources referring to the studies for the Holocaust in Greece, the country that

was wounded the most in entire Europe –where 87% of the Greek Jewry was annihilated in

Germany’s crematoria – only sporadic studies, and mainly in English bibliography, exist. This

presentation based in research that occurs in its initial stages, hopes to contribute in the Greek

studies that refer to Holocaust in Greece by researching the events of Zakynthos. As Zakynthos

was the only place in Europe that managed to completely save the Jewish population, it seems

that the cooperation of the church, the resistance forces and the Mayor’s determination have

an extraordinary result. The project examines at this stage the case of how the principle forces

of the island managed not to give a list with the names of the Zakynthian Jews, as it happens in

other places in Greece. The question that poses this presentation is, lest the aggressive denial

of the Greeks to give the list of the names played a significant role in the survival? What about

the role of the German Colonel who was ultimately responsible in regard to Jewish case? What

would happen if the German did not play blind eye and the reaction was fatal for both Greeks

and Jews? What about the role of resistance? These and other questions are trying to investigate

this presentation. Finally this project tries to join in with themes than emerged during and after

the crisis in Greece hoping to develop a dialog with topics that were unspoken by many people

and for so long.

22 23

PATRICIA PANAGIOTA KOROMVOKIS / IOANNIS KALAITzIDIS Macquar ie Univers i ty

The relation between Social Problem Solving abilities and L2 Communicative Competence

Differences between university students and immigrants.

Given the research that suggests the social problem solving abilities influence efficient and

effective social interaction, it was hypothesised that people with high social problem solving

abilities are able to use L2 effectively and they evaluate their L2 competence higher than people

scoring lower in social problem solving measures. Research suggests that immigrants are

characterised by high social problem solving abilities. The economic crisis in Greece generated

a significant number of immigrants with academic background and professional experience.

The specific sample was considered as ideal to test present research’s hypothesis. Therefore,

the hypothesis was explored with Greek immigrants having academic background and Greek

university students attending abroad a postgraduate course. Social Problem Solving Inventory

Revised (SPSI-R) was used in order to collect data related to participants’ ability of social problem

solving. Additionally, a questionnaire was elaborated for gathering measures of participants’

effectiveness in L2 use (as was evaluated by themselves). Results provided support for the

hypothesis above, revealing a moderate correlation between social problem solving abilities and

the self-evaluation of L2 competence. Additionally, the analysis indicated a significant difference

in social problem solving scores between Greek immigrants and Greek university students. This

differential effect was further investigated revealing a high correlation between social problem

solving scores and the self-evaluation of L2 competence in immigrants. However this correlation

was moderate in university students. Furthermore, the analysis was not revealed a significant

difference between the two groups (immigrant and students) for the variable of L2 competence.

The causality between variables has to be further investigated in order to reveal any possible

impact of social problem solving abilities on self-evaluation of L2 competence.

TAKIS KOzOKOS, DEMOCRITUS Univers i ty of Thrace, Department of Architecture and Engineer ing

Το σχέδιο μνημείων στην αρχαιότητα με αναφορές στα μνημεία της Ακροπόλεως / The Design of monuments in Antiquity I regard to the site of the Athens Acropolis

The paper discusses the design of Memorials and Monuments in antiquity, which came to

greatly influence ANZAC memorialisation in Australia stylistically and constructively.

ANTONIOS LITINAS / MARIANTHI KOSMARIKOUFl inders Univers i ty

Blogging as an Assessment Tool in Higher Education

In the beginning of the 21st century one could not have predicted the impact the internet would

have had on everyday life. As we now live in a computer dominated era, we use computer-

aided methods in teaching and learning at all levels of education. Consequently we are called

to facilitate the needs of e-citizens. Blogging is a part of this phenomenon. The question is:

could we use blogging as a means of assessment at tertiary level and with what success? This

study seeks answers to the above question in a practical way. In 2014 students studying Modern

Greek, at all levels, through Flinders University, have been asked to create a blog and update

it weekly. The purpose of this was to assess what they have learnt during each week and at

the same time for us to reflect on whether the learning objectives for the topic were met. The

utilisation of the blogs was not only to assess what students have learned or they thought they

have learned, but also for us to assess ourselves on their learning outcomes.

PRzEMYSłAw MARCINIAK,Univers i ty of S i les ia , Poland

“Bloodthirsty doctors, underground mice and annoying scholars:

Humour in the 12th century Byzantine satires”

To say that the Byzantines mostly mourned and wept but did not laugh is today a cliché. Despite

it, there is a growing number of studies on Byzantine humour found in chronicles, letters and

visual sources. Yet the most obvious genre – satire – remains almost untouched. To some extent

perhaps this is caused by a mistaken view of Byzantine satires as simple imitations of ancient,

mostly Lucianic, works.

The aim of my paper is to focus on the satires written in 12th century Byzantium – the time

of ‘Byzantium’s greatest literary flourishing’. The chosen group of texts consists of the works

authored by Theodore Prodromos, one of the most prolific Byzantine literati; the anonymous

Timarion; and two works modeled on Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead. I intend to show how

humour in those texts was constructed and how ancient models and motifs were creatively

reused to express Byzantine Realien. I will also discuss to what extent humorous elements in

these satires may reflect the ‘Byzantine sense of humour’ in the 12th century.

PANAYOTA NAzOUUnivers i ty of Sydney

Un-framing politics: The Cultural Policies of Melina Mercouri, as the minister for culture

Η ανακοίνωση αφορά στην πολιτισμική πολιτική της Μελίνας Μερκούρη ως υπουργού

πολιτισμού και επιστημών κατά την περίοδο 1984-1989. Στόχος της παρουσίασης είναι να

διερευνήσει τη διαδικασία μεταμόρφωσης της Μελίνας Μερκούρη από διεθνή σταρ του

κινηματογράφου, σε σύμβολο του καταδιωκόμενου καλλιτέχνη, σε φωνή της αντίστασης, σε

σύμβολο του αγωνιστή και υπερασπιστή της ατομικής και εθνικής της ελευθερίας, και κατ’

επέκταση σε οραματιστή και εφαρμοστή πολιτικών και πολιτισμικών προγραμμάτων με διεθνή

απήχηση. Παρά τις υπέρμετρες φιλοδοξίες και τις αδυναμίες της, η πολιτισμική πολιτική

που διάρθρωσε η Μελίνα Μερκούρη, παραμένει μέχρι σήμερα ο κεντρικός πυρήνας κάθε

πολιτισμικής πρότασης που αρθρώνεται από το επίσημο ελληνικό κράτος.

24 25

DIMITRIS PAIVANAS Babel Language Centre, Athens

Un-framing the Civil War: Literary Prose, Political Identities and Historical Revisionism in Contemporary Greece

Since the unceremonious end of the Greek Civil War (1943-1949) and throughout the

Metapolitefsi (1974-2008) various institutions in Greece have collaborated to establish

incompatible, yet one-sided, representations of the internecine conflict. These discursive

practices served national and international politics, but also helped to polarize Greek society

by forging political identities both during and after the Cold War. They also spawned a series

of literary works that questioned official Civil War historiography. This paper looks mainly at

two works of prose fiction by Thanassis Valtinos [Η κάθοδος των εννιά (1963) and Ορθοκωστά

(1994)] and examines the mutating critical responses to them from 1963 to 2012. The paper

aims to illustrate how literary prose continues to question the dominant discourse on the Greek

Civil War and how it challenged the certainties of leftist political identities in post-dictatorship

Greece. In the light of the heated discussions on the Civil War in which both of Valtinos’ texts

were involved in recent years, the paper also outlines the appropriation of the author’s work by

so-called ‘revisionist’ analysts of the internecine conflict.

MARIA PALAKTSOGLOU / KATHERINE SUTCLIFFE / MARIA SHIALISFl inders Univers i ty

Re-framing the ephemeral: Reports on the contemporary migration experience through blogging

The examination of the migrants’ experience has traditionally involved two main sources – the

recording of oral histories, and the examination of written documents, including letters and

diaries. Although both of these sources have elements of the ephemeral, once the oral and

written personal stories are documented or archived, they become part of a permanent record.

Migrants of today record and communicate their experiences differently. A range of social

media platforms, including blogs, are now commonly used. These methods of recording

the migrant experience differ from the more traditional, in part because they are at risk of

disappearing as platforms are discontinued or accounts closed. In some political contexts,

these digital documents can even be removed from the electronic record by regimes who wish

to erase particular points of view.

This paper will explore how recent Greek migrants, who arrived in Australia after the onset of

the recent Global Financial Crisis, have chosen to represent their migration experience and the

areas which they consider important to share with their peers. A number of, publically available,

blogs are explored and a range of themes identified and analysed to form an understanding

of contemporary migration in general. This research study aims to examine the use of these

records in the broader field of migration studies and enriches the migration discourse.

ANDONIS PIPEROGLOULa Trobe Univers i ty

Reconceptualising early Greek Australia: Entangled allegiances, shifting loyalties and the formation of an early Greek-Australian identity

In recent years the Greek crisis has underscored the multifaceted and complex presence

of Greeks in Australia. Indeed, as the Greek-Australian community currently experiences an

intergenerational shift from the post-war migration era, there is a growing need to re-examine

the historical place that Greeks carved out for themselves in Australia. Set within the milieu of

political events that occurred in, and between, Australia, Greece and the British Empire, this

paper documents how a distinctly Greek-Australian community was made in the late 19th and

early 20th centuries. Utilising material such as government correspondence, parliamentary

papers and the press, I examine the constitutive processes by which early Greek-Australian

settlers defined themselves within the shifting contours of White Australia. Early Greek-

Australians articulated the importance of historical bonds shared between Britain and Greece as

a tool to publicly identify with an emergent Australian nationalism. The representations made by

nascent Greek-Australian leaders often worked in tandem with the formation and reformulation

of Australian nation-building in which the ideals of colonial settlement, imperial allegiance,

respectable labour practices and ‘white’ racial fitness were key features of national inclusion. In

positioning their countrymen as suitable members of the emergent national polity, early Greek-

Australian leaders reworked and redefined aspects of their Hellenic heritage. In defence of their

national pride early Greek-Australian leaders transmitted a constructed ideology of cultural

continuity that envisioned Greeks to allegedly hold exemplary civilisational attributes which

permitted them a distinctive place within the anglocentric Australian nation. In this process,

their articulations of national inclusion offer us an important historical reading into pluralistic

expressions of cross-imperial and transnational identities. In paying particular attention to their

specifically Australian cultural idioms of British imperialism, European philhellenism, and the

constitutive processes of early Greek-Australian public conduct we can thus reflect on how early

Greek migrants identified with both Australia and Greece– two countries forever situated in the

geopolitical interstices of East and West.

RYAN PRESTONTan Tao Univers i ty, Viet-Nam

The International Scope of Photis Kontoglou’s Worldview

Photis Kontoglou (1895-1965) is best known for his leading role in the revival of Byzantine

painting in modern Greece. Unlike that of many of his contemporaries, however, Kontoglou’s

revival program conformed closely both to the subject matter and style of earlier Byzantine art.

In carrying out his revival, Kontoglou sought to turn his back on the culture of Western Europe,

seeking in its place an idealized Greek medieval past which he saw threatened by the forces

of European modernity.Studies to date have tended to focus on this aspect of Kontoglou’s

work to the relative neglect of his ongoing ambivalent relationship with western European

culture. However, despite Kontoglou’s professed rejection of western influences, I argue that

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the foundation of his aesthetic temperament and indeed overall worldview continued to be

informed by western European precedents over the course of his life. To take one example,

Kontoglou’s Byzantine revival can be seen as but the latest in a string of earlier medieval revival

movements, from the Pre-Raphaelites, to the Nazarenes, to the Russian Neo-Primitivists. By

focusing on the wider European context of Kontoglou’s work, we have a chance to evaluate

Kontoglou’s artistic legacy beyond the narrow strictures of an insular and inward-looking Greek

national movement that has contributed to an almost total ignorance of Kontoglou outside

Greece. The purpose of my paper, then, is to reveal the international scope of Kontoglou’s work

while offering alternate ways of viewing and interpreting it as a whole. To that end, my paper

will focus on the artistically fertile decade of 1930s, concentrating above all on a comparative

analysis of two works: Kontoglou’s home mural and City Hall mural.

VASSILIKI RAPTIHarvard Univers i ty

“Either of the Height or of the Depth”:

Nanos Valaoritis’ De-stereotyping of the “Greeks” in the Time of Crisis

If there is anyone who has consistently de-stereotyped Greek culture, de-mythologized, de-

constructed and ultimately reconstructed its imaginative potential, that person is Nanos Valaoritis

who has now been turned into a cosmopolitan “cultural phenomenon.” Always “present” in the

Greek scene no matter where he lived (Paris, London, Geneva, Oakland, California or Athens and

Nydri), the 93-year old now avant-garde Nanos Valaoritis, like a “horsefly,” kept paving the way

for new ways of seeing and radical perceptions of the self, especially as dictated by his desire

to re-examine the Ancients. Amidst the current crisis, Valaoritis indeed not only is “present” as a

public persona, but he also has initiated long debates about the causes and effects of the crisis,

especially since his open letter to the Greek Prime Minister Mr. Antonis Samaras, dated April 30,

2013, where he warned him about the dangerous effects of the increasingly appealing Neo-

Nazi party Golden Dawn. Moreover, four new books of his came out of the Greek crisis from

2010 to the present: Χρίσματα (2011), Ουρανός χρώμα βανίλιας (2011), Το Πικρό καρναβάλι

(2013) and Ή του ύψους ή του βάθους: Πρόσφατα άρθρα γύρω από τον πολιτισμό στην Ελλάδα

της κρίσης (2013). This presentation will pay particular attention to the last collection of articles

which present Valaoritis’s systematic exploration of the image of the Greeks as standing at the

extremes, “either of the height or of the depth,” throughout their long history, in an effort “to

eradicate the stereotypes against the Greek nation that so unjustly is deeply tormented,” as the

book itself claims. This presentation not only will elaborate on the main points that Valaorits

makes in this collection of articles, but more importantly, it will contextualize them within the

frame of his overall avant-garde contribution to the Greek Letters.

SOPHIA SAKELLISUnivers i ty of Sydney

Red Hulk: A Modern Greek Tragedy of Dysfunction and Alienation

Red Hulk, a 2013 multi-award-winning Greek short film, by Asimina Proedrou, explores themes

of identity, nationalism, xenophobia, anger and fear. It is a hard-hitting exposé of a society in

decline, where frustration at the failing institutions gives way to racism, sexism, intolerance and

extreme violence in an effort to cleanse the community of the foreign element which is blamed

for all its dysfunction. With the absolute rupture between signifier and signified in the national

symbols, values, codes and traditions, the issue of identity has become narrowly defined, yet all-

encompassing and self-absorbing, resulting in the severing of ties with traditional supports such

as family, friends and colleagues. The inevitable alienation leads the individual to seek refuge

with a close-knit group of neo-Nazis linked to corrupt police, which operates under strict codes

of secrecy outside of the law, and ensures its longevity by binding its members in a web of ultra-

nationalist criminality.

CHERYL SIMPSONFl inders Univers i ty

Kendimata and national identity: is it all in the past?

Throughout much of the period of modern Greece there have been specific times of social,

political and economic concerns where the role of national identity comes to the forefront of

public debate. This is particularly the case during times of upheaval or rapid change when the

affirmation of ‘Greekness’ has been employed by the intelligentsia and upper class. The 19th

century with the evolution of the Modern Greek state, the Asia Minor disaster of the 20s and

30s, the world economic crisis of the post world war period of the 40s and 50s, were all times

when Greek heritage and identity were questioned and promoted in a particular way. During

these times the arts and crafts have played a fundamental role in promoting the dominant view

of Greek identity at a particular historical juncture. This paper critically examines the contribution

of “kendimata” to national identity in the past and questions what role can kendimata play in

society today.

ANDREAS TRIANTAFYLLOUThe Univers i ty of Edinburgh

Unframing “C. P. Cavafy”: The Case of Lou Harrison’s Scenes from Cavafy

2013 marked 150 years since C. P. Cavafy’s birth and 80 years since his death and on this

occasion there has been an abundance of events honoring C. P. Cavafy both in Greece and

outside Greece, despite the persistence of the Greek crisis. Better yet, because exactly of the

Greek crisis, Cavafy has been re-appropriated in order for people to read/explain the crisis in

Greece and Cyprus, as in the characteristic reading of his poem, “In a small European Colony

circa 200 A.D., or simply, in order to boost the Greek people’s low morale, as in the case of the

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circulation of his lines on the public buses in Athens, an initiative of the Onassis Foundation. In

this presentation, I approach “C. P. Cavafy” differently, in a manner that transcends all kinds of

crisis and all Eurocentric approaches, an approach which yet –I believe- does justice to C. P.

Cavafy. I propose then to approach “C. P. Cavafy” as a performative genre that expands him up

until the area of the South Indian Ocean --characteristic for its intermingling of different cultures,

religions, and civilizations and thus reminiscent of the Hellenistic World--. I propose to do this

by means of the model of Lou Harrison’s Scenes from Cavafy gamelan-based music rendition

which, in the end, elevates Cavafy to an ecumenical level. In my presentation, I will demonstrate

the specifics pertaining to Lou Harrison’s approach to Cavafy and I will draw conclusions

about the lessons we learn from his daring and innovative experiment with the Alexandrian

poet. By offering his aesthetic view on “C. P. Cavafy,” Lou Harrison paves the way for other

artists to follow his path and spread Cavafy’s work to parts of the globe that were not previously

considered as conveying his “natural” readership and audience.

MICHAEL TSIANIKAS/ ΜίΧΑΛΗΣ ΤΣίΑΝίΚΑΣFl inders Univers i ty

Καβάφης 400 Μ.Χ: Κοσμοπολιτισμός /ΚοσμοθεωρίαΣτην εισήγηση θα εξεταστεί η περίπλοκη σχέση κοσμοπολιτισμού και κοσμοθεωρίας. Θα

αντληθούν παραδείγματα από την ποίηση του Καβάφη για να φανεί η λεπτή σχέση των δύο

εννοιών και κάποτε η μεγάλη τους διάσταση. Θα φανεί ότι σαφέστατα ο Καβάφης πριμοδοτεί

τη δεύτερη. Πάνω εκεί θα στηθεί ένα ευρύτερο θεωρητικό σχήμα που αφορά ευρύτερα

φαινόμενα στάσεων και επιλογών αναφορικά με τις δυο έννοιες. Θα εξηγηθεί επίσης το 400 Μ.Χ

του τίτλου.

ERMA VASSILIOUAustral ian Nat ional Univers i ty

Semantic change in Byzantine Greek

Everything is perpetually in a stage of change and so is language. Anna Comnena’s the Alexiad,

one of the largest and best works of all times, written in Greek, is a strong motivation for

research in Language change. The present work provides examples on semantic change from

Comnena’s magnum opus.

This is part three of Language change in Greek, in 11th -13th centuries Byzantium. Part four,

five and lastly six are now ready for future discussions. Semantic change in Greek, particularly

when the examples are drawn from a number of 12th and 13th centuries “Pseudo-classical”

documents, as labeled by many philologists, is of great importance from the view point of

semantic change in general and, also, when studied within the frame of grammaticalization. The

latter is discussed in other parts of this study. The present work discovers and analyzes shifts of

meanings (altered, removed or added), it provides examples of shifts through words presented

in a more detailed discussion (words such as κρίμα, judgment, κύων, σκύλος, dog), it reveals

obsolete as well as obsolescent words and it lastly exhibits a list of interesting words, found in

the Alexiad, and their semantic evolution though the centuries.

GEORGE VASSILACOPOULOS & TOULA NICOLACOPOULOSLa Trobe Univers i ty, Melbourne

Nothing in between: Crisis, vision and death in the art of Goya and Michelakakis

In this paper we explore the meaning of crisis in current times by focusing on the work of the

artist, George Michelakakis. In particular we propose a reading of work he created in Australia

and Greece from the 1970s onwards. We suggest that Michelakakis responds to the project that

Goya can be said to have initiated with the production of The Third of May 1808 and, arguably,

completes this project in so far as the latter calls for art’s response to the gathering of history as

exemplified in the French Revolution.

MARIA zARIMISUnivers i ty of New South Wales

“Hellenic continuity and nationhood”

This paper is part of my current research on nationhood and race in the Greek state from a

post-evolutionary perspective. While scholarship has been extensive, examining diachronically

the socio-political factors that have shaped and characterized the “Hellenic ideals and ideology”

of modern Greece, it is only in recent times that the discourse on the involvement of biological

factors has intensified, both academically and in the public arena.

In this paper I will be investigating some of the biological ideas on nation and race appropriated

by a number of Greek intellectuals in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and how

some of these ideas have re-emerged, in various forms, in the current climate in Greece.

zDENKO zLATARUnivers i ty of Sydney

Being ‘El Greco’ In Toledo: Kazantzakis And El Greco

The Elective Affinity of Being Greek in Voluntary Exile

Kazantzakis’s own (kind of) autobiography is titled “The Report to Greco”. He obviously identified

with the great painter not only because he was a fellow Cretan and thus a Greek (El Greco),

but because both of them spent considerable parts of their lives in self-imposed kind of exile,

i.e. a voluntary absence from their native Crete. In case of El Greco it was his quest for artistic

greatness and immortality that took him away from his native island first to Venice, then to

Rome, and finally to Toledo where he spent the last thirty-seven years of his life (1577-1614).

Kazantzakis chose a voluntary self-exile from postwar Greece, mainly because of political

disagreements with the conservative governments in Athens, but also because the south of

France had greater appeal for him as an international artist and France afforded him a stage from

which to launch his major novels. In terms of Max Weber, the two had an elective affinity for

self-imposed exile.

This report will concentrate mainly on El Greco’s negotiation of his own Greekness in Castilian-

dominated culture of Toledo and his relations with fellow artists, humanists, and Greeks.

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ACKnowLedGMenTs

The members of the Department of Modern Greek would like

to express their gratitude to -

The Head of the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney

Professor Jeffrey Riegel for his support and encouragement.

Our sincere thanks also to Rosemary Go, Michael McCabe, Shauna Crick and

Alessandro Cioni for their patience and assistance during the preparation of the

conference.

The artistic skills and technical expertise of TwO MINDS graphic atelier for the

design and layout of this program.

Finally, the printing of the program would not have been possible without the

dedication and friendship of Mr Nic Valis from

Blink Print, Creative Design and Print

PHOTO COVER CREDITS

Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas , “Large Landscape of Hydra” (1955)

http://www.eikastikon.gr/zografiki/theofilos.html

Yannis moralis, Two Friends (1946)

conference program Unframing Hellenism pdf

Documents

Transcript of conference program Unframing Hellenism pdf