Spring 2012 Events

CSAMES Brown Bag Lecture Series: "The Impact of the Media on Cyprus and Greece"

February 21
Speaker: Alexis Georgiadis (junior in Journalism & recipient of a 2011 Peter Agris scholarship)
Lucy Ellis lounge, 1080 Foreign Languages Building, 12PM

1st Champaign Greek Film Festival with the collaboration of the FilmHellenes

March 2 & 3, 2012
Art Theater, Champaign
With well over two hundred viewers from Champaign-Urbana, Chicago, and Indiana, the First Champaign Greek film festival on March 2 & 3 has been a great success. We would like to thank everyone who came out to watch the seven films shown over 1 and 1/2 days. Among others, the festival was featured in the February 16 issue of Inside Illinois and on the March 1 edition of Afternoon Magazine with Celeste Quinn.

The Contemporary Piano IV: Impressions from Greece

March 13, 2012 7:30PM
Smith Memorial Room, Smith Memorial Hall

March 15, 2012 7PM
National Hellenic Museum, 333 South Halsted Street, Chicago, IL 60661 7PM

During two performances, in Urbana (March 13) and in Chicago (March 15), award-winning pianist Konstantinos Papadakis (New England Conservatory) will perform a program of works by Greek composers and new works inspired by Greek themes. The program includes works by Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949), Jose Villavicencio Grossmann (b. 1973), Minas Borboudakis (b. 1974), Robert Maggio (b. 1964), Panagiotis Theodossiou (b.1964), and Manos Hadjidakis (1925-1994).

Why Contemporary? Why Piano? Why Greece?

While folk and popular Greek music is frequently performed, and with great success, in concert halls in all the major cities of the US, contemporary classical music by Greek composers is scarcely known and rarely performed. This may create the false impression that such music is not being produced, when in fact many young Greek composers enjoy considerable acclaim among their peers worldwide. The Contemporary Piano IV aims to help challenge these common perceptions. Konstantinos Papadakis is a foremost champion of contemporary classical Greek music, who regularly performs and records these works in venues across the world. Significantly, the program includes two works, by an American and by an Albanian composer, inspired by Greek themes that will be premiered at this concert. In juxtaposition with the other works in this program, these works materialize the dialogue between contemporary Greek music and the wider musical production of the 20th and 21st centuries that this concert hopes to help take root.

The "Contemporary Piano IV: Impressions from Greece" has been awarded an Innovative Initiatives Grant by the Modern Greek Studies Association and is co-sponsored by the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music.

Nationalism qua Modernization: The Greek War of Independence

April 24, 2012
Guest speaker: Dr. Pantelis Lekkas (Onassis Foundation Senior Visiting Scholar & Associate Professor of Political Science, Panteion University). This talk is part of the CSAMES brownbag lunchtime series.
Lucy Ellis lounge, 1080 Foreign Languages Building, 12-1PM

This is an attempt to place the Greek War of Independence in the wider context of the clash between Tradition and Modernity in the European periphery. It focuses on the ideology and the movement of nationalism � a phenomenon springing up in modernity and bringing forward the concept of the nation as the proper unit of state organization. Being the undisputed offspring of nationalism (which is to be understood as both the product and the vehicle of modernization), the Greek War of Independence is discussed not solely in its political dimensions but also in terms of its contribution to a much broader societal change. It is in this sense that the Greek struggle for independence may be interpreted as the specifically �Greek exit� from tradition � as an undoubtedly unique event of momentous importance per se, yet, on the other hand, as one more instance in a prolonged and very intricate process of societal transformations.

Past Events

Find archived events we've held in previous semesters.