Take a minute to explore with us the highlights of 2016 at CHS!
This past year has been filled with events and activities at both CHS campuses in Washington, DC, and Nafplio, Greece, online discussions and dialogues in a friendly environment, new research opportunities, changes and additions on the CHS free online publications and the CHS website.
Featured Online Publications from the Hellenic Studies Series
Particles in Ancient Greek Discourse: Five Volumes Exploring Particle Use across Genres
A born-digital publication from the Hellenic Studies Series co-authored by Anna Bonifazi, Annemieke Drummen, and Mark de Kreij. This comprehensive work, available in full on the CHS website, analyzes particle usage across five genres of ancient Greek discourse—epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, and historiography—with the aim of exploring communicative strategies, cognitive processes, and the interactional dynamics of language production. The fifth volume consists of a searchable, sortable database designed to showcase the wealth of previous particle studies, from the fourteen monographs on Greek particles that have appeared between 1588 and 1993 to the hundreds of dedicated articles, grammars, thesauruses, and lexica.
Classics@ Issue 14: Singers and Tales in the 21st Century; The Legacies of Milman Parry and Albert Lord
In December, 2010, a conference was convened at Harvard to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Albert Lord’s seminal book, The Singer of Tales, and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of Lord’s mentor, Milman Parry. Twenty-nine speakers from around the world presented papers intended to illustrate the wide-ranging impact of the work of Parry and Lord. A collection of these papers will soon appear as a printed volume published by the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature. To facilitate the dissemination of these studies, we present here preliminary versions of a number of the contributions.
Masterpieces of Metonymy: From Ancient Greek Times to Now
Our very own Gregory Nagy analyzes metonymy as a mental process that complements metaphor. If metaphor is a substitution of something unfamilar for something familiar, then metonymy can be seen as a connecting of something familiar with something else that is already familiar. Applying this formulation, Nagy offers close readings of over one hundred examples of metonymy as it comes to life in the verbal and the visual arts of Greek culture, as well as in the arts of other cultures. Though it is debatable whether all the selected examples really qualify as masterpieces, what they all have in common is their potential for artistic greatness. A close reading of the verbal and the visual evidence, Nagy argues, leads to a fuller appreciation of this greatness.
Classical Inquiries: Professor Gregory Nagy’s Commentary on the Iliad
Classical Inquiries (CI) is an online, rapid-publication project of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, devoted to sharing some of the latest thinking on the ancient world with researchers and the general public. During 2016, Gregory Nagy has shared samplings of his commentary on rhapsodies 1 through 21 of the Iliad. By focusing on these rhapsodies and experimenting with a variety of features in his comments, Professor Nagy offers a preview of the larger, forthcoming project: A Homer commentary in progress.
CHS Website’s New Look!
We are very excited to be celebrating the launch of our newly-designed website. The new look of the CHS website includes clear outlines and a more intuitive navigation. Our publications, our multiple programs and activities such as exhibitions, symposia, trips to Greece, and events are in the spotlight. As the CHS community is an integral part of the Center for Hellenic Studies, we hope that you will take a few minutes to explore the feel and look of the new website.
Ongoing Project: The Free First Thousand Years of Greek
The Free First Thousand Years of Greek project seeks to present source texts of Classical Greek in an open, dynamic corpus that will change radically the accessibility to a multitude of resources and different versions of editions and publications on Greek. This initiative is part of a larger project, the Open Greek and Latin Project. Director of Publications and Information Technology at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Leonard Muellner, shared with the community the most recent progress on The Free First Thousand Years of Greek project.
Learn Attic Greek
This Introduction to Attic Greek comprises a series of video presentations made by Professor Leonard Muellner and Belisi Gillespie. These videos cover the content covered in two semesters of a college-level Introduction to Ancient Greek course. They are designed to be used in conjunction with the book Greek: An Intensive Course by Hardy Hansen and Gerald M. Quinn. Further volumes will be released in due course.
You can find a suggested syllabus and the videos here:
Introduction to Attic Greek: Volume 1 (Units 1–3), with Leonard Muellner and Belisi Gillespie
Introduction to Attic Greek: Volume 2 (Units 4–7), with Leonard Muellner and Belisi Gillespie
Introduction to Attic Greek: Volume 3 (Units 8–10), with Leonard Muellner and Belisi Gillespie
Travel to Greece
Join Professor Gregory Nagy and a group of students, HeroesX participants, and alumni, March 10–19, 2017, on the Harvard Alumni Association – Center for Hellenic Studies Spring Break Trip 2017, an immersive, 10-day exploration of Greece!
Travel back in time to ancient Greece, starting in the charming seaport town of Nafplio, home to Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies. Then proceed through the Peloponnese to Delphi and Athens, exploring Greece’s famous archaeological sites and museums along the way. Supplement your journey with selected readings from translations of Homer, Pausanias, and even some modern authors.
Registration is open but space is limited, so take a look and register now via the Harvard Alumni Association website!
Research Opportunities in Greece
Since 2008, CHS has generously supported the Harvard Summer Program in Greece, by offering two research fellowships to junior faculty members–Adjunct Lecturers, Lecturers, Assistant Professors–of Schools of Humanities and Social Sciences from Greek Universities. The application procedure is underway until February 9, 2017, so learn more and apply now!
In continuation of this effort, the Center for Hellenic Studies supports research on Hellenic culture with an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. Following the successful Fellowships program running ever since 1961 in Washington, DC, and in an effort to encourage and promote research in Greece, CHS brings more research opportunities to junior faculty members and to individual researchers, aiming to build a strong network of fellows that will enhance learning and support the academic profile of Greece. 2016 has been a milestone year for expanding the research opportunities in Greece.
Exhibition Space at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC
The Center for Hellenic Studies is reimagining its physical space with the aim of opening our doors to wider audiences. In addition to our continued commitment to scholarly research, we are also identifying opportunities to support artistic expression and performance. The emerging result is a series of events designed to celebrate the Classical world in a contemporary context.
Beginning November 10, the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC will showcase a series of paintings and drawings by artist Anne Davey. This exhibit imagines encounters with the Nereids, the daughters of Nereus, who were divine inhabitants of the sea as described in Iliad 18.35-69. These Nereids appear as anthropomorphic figures seemingly at home in the water but obscured for the viewer above the surface by the distorting reflections and refractions of their natural medium.
Kosmos Society: Online Community for Classical Studies
In 2013, the “Ancient Greek Hero” launched, a groundbreaking open, online project from HarvardX that uses Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) technology to introduce participants to the literature and heroes of ancient Greece. The project is directed by Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Since then, “HeroesX” has logged over 90,000 enrollments from over 170 countries. Through this project, Nagy is sharing his latest research on ancient Greek heroes, a subject that he has been studying for over four decades. Participants in previous sessions describe being transformed by the content, the community, and the profound experience of “reading closely.” HeroesX participants that wanted to continue the dialogue formed Hour 25, an open-ended, community-driven companion project hosted by Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies.
During these years, the friendly, intergenerational community of Hour 25 continues to explore and discuss the themes and content first introduced in HeroesX, hosts friendly discussions with visiting scholars, continues the dialogue between its members and the broader community through its forums and shares open access resources with the broader CHS community. With an eye to future years, Hour 25 is evolving, thus embracing HeroesX Participants, as well as CHS community members, scholars, and lifelong learners, and becoming the Kosmos Society: Online Community for Classical Studies. The Kosmos Society will continue to invite more members from the community with an interest in exploring themes on the ancient world and on a broad area of topics, while contributing to an intergenerational dialogue across different continents and disciplines.
On behalf of the entire CHS team we wish you a Happy New Year filled with health, happiness, and spectacular success!