The Center for Hellenic Studies

Summer Internship Program 2010 primary

     

The Summer Internship Program in Nafplion, Greece 2010

The application for 2010 has closed.

May 24 – July 25, 2010

Overview | Application Information | Detailed Internship Descriptions | Modern Greek Language Component | Faculty

OVERVIEW

Nafplio The Center for Hellenic Studies Summer Internship Program offers Harvard students the opportunity to spend the summer living and working in Nafplion, Greece. Nafplion was the first capital city of Greece following the War of Independence (1821-1829) and now serves as the home of CHS’s research and meeting facility. For a rigorous, immersive experience, the internships combine academic and professional work, including daily instruction in Modern Greek and discussions in Modern Greek at mealtimes, with weekend excursions and cultural activities. Additionally, the program brings together a group of undergraduates from Harvard College and students from universities and colleges in Greece. By working in teams at their internships, the students have an opportunity to learn from each other as well as apply their academic training in practical settings.

After a week-long orientation, interns will begin their work at a variety of cultural and governmental organizations in and around Nafplion (see below for detailed internship descriptions). The program offers two options, one that lasts five weeks, including the orientation, and one that lasts nine weeks. Both options begin on Monday, May 24. The first option concludes on Sunday, June 27; the second, on Sunday, July 25. The five-week option may be combined with the Harvard Summer School’s Comparative Cultural Studies Program in Olympia and Nafplion.

The CHS will provide housing for the interns. Those who participate in the five-week option will receive a stipend of $2500 to offset costs associated with international travel, local transportation, meals, and incidentals. The stipend for interns in the nine-week option will be $3500.

APPLICATION INFORMATION

The application deadline is February 12th, 2010.

Students interested in applying should

  • 1. fill out a CARAT form for Harvard OIP (use this budget sheet when filling out the form), and
  • 2. fill out the online application for found at chs.internship.questionpro.com, and include in the application
    • a. contact information for two references* and
    • b. an attachment of an electronic copy of his/her transcript.

*After submitting your application, the CHS will contact your references directly for recommendations. Both references do not need to be Harvard professors.

The CHS will contact finalists to schedule an interview.

Eligibility

Concentrators from any field may apply. The only requirements are intellectual curiosity and a readiness to engage directly with other cultures. Knowledge of either ancient or modern Greek is welcome but not required. Only current freshmen, sophomores, and juniors are eligible to apply and participate.

Students who have participated in CHS programs in the past are eligible to apply. However, students who have never had a CHS internship will have priority.

For more information regarding the Internship program and registration with the program’s mailing list please contact summer_internship@chs.harvard.edu.

DETAILED INTERNSHIP DESCRIPTIONS

The Fugaro

FugaroAn industrial complex on the outskirts of Nafplion dating from the 1920’s is currently undergoing renovations that will transform the site into a center for the arts. Named “The Fugaro”, after its 33m-tall chimney, the complex will house an exhibition and conference hall, theater, library, art studios, café, open-air cinema and the ArtShop. Interns will work primarily with Maria Konstantopoulou, the librarian of the Anthos Library, which focuses on the humanities with special emphasis on art and architecture. Responsibilities will include helping with the process of moving the library to its new space and assisting with cataloguing and organizing the collection. Depending on the construction schedule, interns might have opportunities to contribute to other activities and projects associated with the development.

National Gallery

nafplio national gallery smallThe annex of the National Gallery in Nafplion opened in 2004 in a neoclassical building originally built in 1905. The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation funded the renovation of the structure to house a collection of works related to the War of Independence and Nafplion’s role as the first capital of the modern Republic of Greece. Making use of the collection, the library at the gallery, and the online resources available through the Harvard University library system, interns will work on a project studying the Philhellenism of Americans and Europeans. They will also work on educational programs for the community. The CHS is particularly interested in placing students with an interest or background in art, art history, modern European history, curatorial studies, and aesthetic education in this internship.

State Archives

archives photoThe General State Archives in Nafplion houses the archives of the Municipality of Nafplion, which served as the first capital of the Greek Republic from 1829 to 1834. This collection is of particular historical importance because it contains a continuous documentary record for the city reaching back to the late 18th century. There exist comparable materials for only one other city in Greece: Syros. One of the projects for the interns for with summer of 2010 will involve a library of books and other materials that a family from Nafplion collected over a span of approximately 100 years. Interns will help with processing and conserving these resources. They will also work on a project to scan documents and convert analogue audio recordings to digital formats. In filling this internship, the program will seek students who are concentrating in history and those who have an interest in working with primary historical data. Although not required, knowledge of Greek, French, or German would be useful.

Nafplion Archaeological Museum

arch exhibitWhat was once a Venetian warehouse built in 1713 now houses the Nafplion Archaeological Museum, which reopened in March 2009 after a five-year renovation program. The museum collection includes finds from a number of excavations in the Argolid including artifacts from Tiryns and the “Dendra Panoply,” a suit of bronze armor dating from the 15th century BCE. Interns will participate in the full range of activities associated with the museum from rescue excavations in the field, to processing, conserving, and storing artifacts, to recording data about the finds. They will also work on a bibliographical study of research related to the holdings of the museum. The program will give priority to students concentrating in classics, archaeology, anthropology and those interested in pursuing careers associated with museums, for example, conservation.

 

Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation Museum

folklore museum smallFounded in 1974, the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation is a non-profit institution based in Nafplion that focuses on the study and preservation of the modern material culture from the Peloponnese and beyond. The foundation’s Vassilios Papantoniou Museum opened in 1981. The foundation’s current holdings comprise over 27,000 artifacts, including one of the most important collections of traditional Greek costumes. In 1981, the museum received the Museum of the Year award from the European Museum Forum. Interns will contribute to work on several projects of the foundation including digitizing the exhibits and helping with an online catalogue of the holdings.

The Foundation of the Hellenic World

Hellenic World FoundationThe Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW) is a private, non-profit cultural organization based in Athens, Greece. Its main mission is the preservation and dissemination of Hellenic history and tradition, through the use of cutting-edge technologies such as 3D and VR reconstructions of archaeological sites, web-based encyclopaedias and other reference works, as well as the organisation of conferences, seminars and other educational programmes.

The Department of History and Archaeology is responsible for carrying out all the historical and archaeological research necessary for the development of the Foundation’s various projects. The department’s work also includes the adaptation and examination of historical and cultural information depending on the media, the objectives and the target audience of each project. It is also responsible for the scientific publications, the organisation and scientific management of the FHW’s collections as well as the Foundation’s archaeological excavations in Bulgaria.

 

MODERN GREEK LANGUAGE COMPONENT

Course Dates and Times

M 5/31- Fri 7/23/2010, M-F 9:00-10:30, TU, TH 19:00-21:00, MWF online sessions

Course Description

This course is a team-taught pilot course designed for students with little or no previous exposure to Modern Greek. By fully integrating the ACTFL standards of foreign language education (communication, cultures, connections, comparisons and communities), it aims to achieve remarkable proficiency through full immersion in Greek culture and cumulative acquisition of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. Instruction consists of a 1.5h per day master class studying elementary aspects of the Modern Greek language based on an introductory course packet and of a 2h per day conversation lab practicing the newly acquired material. The students will have ample opportunities to immerse themselves into Greek language and culture including a series of excursions, as well as acquire and internalize new vocabulary tailored to their internships through class discussions and review sessions. Instruction is supplemented by technology and intensive teamwork with Greek peers.

Faculty

M 5/31-F 6/25/2010

Vassiliki Rapti, Ph.D., Preceptor in Modern Greek, Department of the Classics, Harvard University

M 6/28-F 7/23/2010

Stamatia G. Dova, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Classics and Modern Greek Studies at Hellenic College

Policies

Attendance of all class sessions, field trips and cultural events is mandatory.

Absolutely no make-up tests and/or exams.

No credit for late homework (gladly accepted for review).

All students are expected to be familiar with and observant of Harvard University plagiarism policy.

FACULTY

DovaStamatia G. Dova is an Assistant Professor of Classics and Modern Greek Studies at Hellenic College in Brookline, MA. She is also the director of the Kallinikeion Intensive Modern Greek Language Program at Hellenic College, where she teaches every summer, and the director of Project Eustathius, a program that promotes Classics as a minor among Religious Studies majors at Hellenic College. Dr. Dova’s research interests include epic, lyric and tragic poetry and especially the concept of the hero in ancient Greece. She also works on reception studies and the representation of antiquities in 19th and 20th century literature. She has published and presented on Aeschylus, Bacchylides, Homer, Mimnermus, modern Greek literature (Terzakis, Papadiamantis) and is currently working on a book on heroism and mortality in archaic and classical Greek literature entitled Five Stories About Achilles: Heroism and Mortality from Homer to Philostratus. She is also working with N. Poulopoulos on a co-edited volume entitled Plasmatic Narratives: Historical Poetics in 19th and 20th century Greece. She is also Fellow of Hellenic Language and Literature at the Center for Hellenic Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard University. For more information, please see her website.

 

Nicolas Prevelakis is a lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University, where he teaches Social Theory, as well as a junior tutorial on “Globalization and the Nation State.” In the fall, he also teaches a graduate course on “The Politics of Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Religion in International Relations” at Boston University’s department of International Relations. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) and one in Sociology from Boston University. His research deals with Eastern Christianity, and the interplay between nationalism and religion.

 

RaptiVassiliki Rapti is Preceptor in Modern Greek at Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with an Emphasis in Drama from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006. Her publications and research interests center upon Modern Greek literature, avant-garde theatre and performance, especially surrealist drama and the poetics of play and games. She also conducts research on Modern Greek language pedagogy with a focus on teaching with technology. Her current book-length projects are a study of ludics in surrealist and postmodern theatre and a monograph on the theatrical work of the Greek author Nanos Valaoritis. For her research and teaching she has received, among other grants and awards, the Derec Bok Award for Excellence in Teaching at Harvard (Spring 2009), The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation grant for her position as an Assistant Professor at UMSL (2004-2008), the Greek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) and the Mellon Dissertation Fellowship from Washington University where she also received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has been recently appointed a Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard. For more information, please see her website.



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