Welcome to the fall semester: register for events beginning this week with the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies

Welcome back! With the fall semester now underway, it's time to share the latest news and events from the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies. In this month's digest, we provide an update of our activities over the summer, including the recent Agora publication and news of SSHRC award winners. We also share our Fall Seminar Series speaker line-up and provide information on how to register for events beginning this week. As always, thank you to our local and international community of supporters. Whether you are a student, faculty member, researcher, alumnus, emeritus, donor, or simply a philhellene, we hope this semester's programming inspires you to continue engaging with the study of Greek history, language, literature, culture and more!

Fall Seminar Series Returns this Week

Mark your calendars! Our annual Seminar Series has returned and will include presentations on a wide range of Hellenic topics in the fields of archaeology, classics, Byzantine, Ottoman, and modern Greek history, as well as literary and cultural studies. Attendees can expect a mix of virtual and hybrid event delivery. The first seminar will take place this Friday, September 17th. 

Agora volume eight

Last month we released the eighth volume of the Agora, our annual publication that shares stories on the Centre's activities, events and initiatives. In this edition, read about the launch of the Greek language learning platform, Staellinika, our new home in the Department of Humanities, a unique collaboration between an artist and historian, an introduction to our newest member, professor David Mirhady, and more! Read it now.

Greek edition of professor Krallis' book on Michael Attaleiates published

We are pleased to announce that our very own humanities professor and Director of the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies, Dimitris Krallis, has had his new book, Βίος και πολιτεία ενός βυζαντινού μανδαρίνου: Το Βυζάντιο ιδωμένο αλλιώς, published by Alexandria. This new book is an updated and translated version of his monograph, Serving Byzantium's Emperors: The Courtly Life and Career of Michael Attaleiates. New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture Series, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019. 

Faculty members awarded SSHRC grant to digitally map Temple of Isis in Egypt

In case you missed it, in August we shared the news that faculty members Sabrina Higgins, assistant professor in the Departments of Humanities and Archaeology and the holder of the Hellenic Studies Professorship in Aegean and Mediterranean Societies and Cultures, and Nicholas Hedley, associate professor in the Department of Geography and founder of the SFU’s Special Interface Research Lab, were awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant for a new project, Picturing Religion: The Philae Temple Graffiti Project. Together with the project’s principal investigator, Jitse H.F. Dijkstra, professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Ottawa, the scholars will utilize their grant to digitally map all of the graffiti on the Temple of Isis on the island of Philae in Egypt.

The rifle and the pen: paramilitarism, patronage and nation-building in Civil War Greece

Friday, September 17, 2021 at 10:30 AM PDT

This coming Friday, we will virtually  host Spyros Tsoutsoumpis, associate lecturer at the University of Lancaster (UK) and Friedrich Schiller University in Germany, for his presentation on the intersection between paramilitarism, organized crime, and nation-building during the Greek Civil War. His talk will problematize divisions between legal (state-sanctioned) and illegal (private) violence in the making of the modern nation state and shed light on the alliances that impacted nation-building processes at local and national levels.

Archaeopolitics: the second life of statues

Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 8:00 AM PDT

Later this morning, participate in our joint lecture with the Center for European Studies at Rutgers University  and Archaeology and Art History Department at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Titled "Archaeopolitics: The Second Life of Statues," the lecture will discuss the ways in which ancient statues tend to become entangled into contemporary political agendas with professor of history and archaeology, Dimitris Plantzos, from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The event will be introduced and moderated by professor Dimitris Krallis.

Ancient Egyptian graffiti: the case of the temples of Philae

Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 5:30 PM PDT

This evening, Jitse H.F. Dijkstra, professor of classics at the University of Ottawa, will provide an overview of current scholarship on the topic of ancient Egyptian graffiti with a particular focus on temples. He will address questions such as why Egyptians left graffiti in such great numbers, what they meant for them and what we can deduce from them about the personal religious piety of both priests and visitors to temples.

Be sure to register for this free public event hosted by the American Research Center in Egypt (Vancouver Chapter).

Come to the cabaret: where to look for cosmopolitan Egypt

Friday, September 24, 2021 at 2:30 PM PDT

Next Friday we will host award-winning editor and translator Raphael Cormack for his virtual presentation on some of the key players in Egypt's entertainment industry during the 1920s. Through this lens, he will attempt to reconceptualize our image of "Cosmopolitan Egypt". Raphael is the author of Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s.

Byron's romantic philhellenism

Saturday, September 25, 2021 at 10:00 AM PDT

This lecture, featuring associate professor Maria Schoina from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, will discuss the changing aspects of Byron’s philhellenism as they were acted out in his lifetime and expressed through his poetic production: from the Romantic Hellenism of Childe Harold’s lines and the Eastern Tales, to the grounded skepticism about Greece’s political future found in his prose and letters, to his life-changing decision to translate his thoughts into actions, “words” into “things,” by joining the Greek uprising and committing himself to a people’s war of national liberation.

This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture, the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, and the Embassy of Greece in the USA.

COVID-19 news and resources

For more information and updates regarding COVID-19 and SFU operations please see SFU's return to campus plan. 

Latest updates

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