14th Annual International Conference on Literature
31 May & 1-3 June, Athens, Greece Program (Athens Local Time) (Note: each presentation includes at least 10 minutes for questions and discussions if available)
Monday 31 May 2021
09.30-10.00 Registration
10.00-11.00 Opening and Welcoming Remarks:
Gregory T. Papanikos, President, ATINER.
Steven Oberhelman, Vice President of International Programs, ATINER, Interim Dean & Professor of Classics, Holder of the George Sumey Jr Endowed Professorship of Liberal Arts, and Texas A&M University, USA. (Video)
Stamos Metzidakis, Head, Literature Unit, ATINER & Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature, Washington University in Saint Louis, USA & Adjunct Professor of French, Hunter College-CUNY, USA. (Video)
11:00-11:30 William Glass, Professor, University of Warsaw, Poland. Title: The Voyages of the Slave Ship Amoretta, 1730-1744.
The Amoretta was a slave ship. It made twelve voyages in fifteen years, following the same basic route: sailing from Bristol, England to Africa (usually to the broad area of what is today Nigeria), then to Charleston, South Carolina, and then back to Bristol. Only the last two trips varied, with its human cargo being sold in Virginia. On these voyages, it bought a total of 3,253 Africans and delivered at least 2655 to buyers in South Carolina and Virginia. It was neither the largest ship to make the Middle Passage nor the smallest. Not much distinguished it from the thousands of other slavers nor were its voyages notable: no dramatic slave revolts marked its crossings of the Atlantic; no pirates looted its cargo; no atrocities, other than those typical of the Middle Passage, occurred. But the very routine nature of its trips is what merits attention. The focus on one ship reveals insights into the slave trade that would otherwise be lost in the overwhelming tragedy of the millions of Africans who had their lives stolen and were used for labor on New World plantations. Much of the scholarship on the slave trade tends to focus on dramatic incidents like the slave revolts on the Amistad and the Tyral or the trade’s place in the development of capitalism or its role in facilitating the growth of global commodities like sugar and cotton or a broad overview its history. The focus on the voyages of one ship provides the opportunity to see in detail the operations of the trade from the construction of the ship to the networks of merchants linking Bristol to Africa to Charleston to commodities exchange and finally to human and moral cost of the Middle Passage. The Amoretta is a good selection for such a case study as its trips coincided with years that English slavers came to dominate the trade and the regularity of its route affords the investigation of the specifics of the commercial web that bound together three continents. Bio: William Glass is professor of American Social History at the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw. He earned degrees in history from Centre College (BA) and Emory University (MA, PhD). He teaches courses on American history, religion, race, and cinema. His research interests center on American Protestantism, the American South, and the use of films as cultural documents. His research has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he has been a Fulbright Fellow in Poland. He has published essays in The Journal of Church and State, Film & History, Jewish Social Studies, and contributed entries for American National Biography and the Encyclopedia of Southern Religion.
11:30-12:00
Stefan Staretu, Director, Center for Theological and Historical Studies-Christian, Romania. Title: The Royal Serbian Right at the Throne of Hungary at the Base of the Formation of the Romanian Orthodox Medieval States.
The overall situation in the Pannonian-Balkan area led to the realities of the 14th-16th centuries, on the background of which the Romanian medieval states were formed and consolidated. The origins of these realities derive from the interactions between the first Hungarian tribes in the Pannonia region and the situation found here, which can be phased in as follows. The first stage is the arrival of the Hungarian tribes from northern Europe, and the conquest of the territory between the eastern Alps and the Nistru by subjugating the slave population found in the area and the realization of a powerful system of rulers. The second stage is a period between the Christianization of Hungarian King Stephen and the coming of Angevins. It is a time when a Western model aristocracy is crystallized, according to the Moravian and Slavic model, but also with the influences of the Bulgarian boyar model, who managed to withstand the Tatar invasion. The second and third periods, post-angevine or, more precisely, Sigismund–Lazarevic are colonization epochs of different populations from the Germanic, North-Pontic or Balkan space that are integrated into the noble structure of the kingdom, strengthening its authority. The contrast between the civilization power of the Orthodox Balkan Byzantian and the military power of the Hungarian aristocracy, which had no advanced civilization level, led to the emergence of conflicts that would lead to the anti-Ottoman war of the Hungarian nobility under the leadership of the Catholic kings of the Angevins. The result of this conflict will be the founding of Walachia and Moldavia and the alienation of Serbia and Bosnia, but also the birth of a tradition of the Hungarian Kingdom as an orthodox kingdom. The spark that triggered this process was the legitimate claim of the Hungarian throne by Orthodox Serbian King Stefan Dragutin at the death of the last Arpadian Andrei III. Stephen Dragutin had this right being married to the great daughter of the former King of Hungary. At the same time, however, a Catholic camp was formed, which organized the bringing of the King of Naples, Carol Robert of Anjou, who had the second right to the Hungarian crown, being married to Andrei III’s second daughter, on the throne of Hungary. Thus, the Slavic-Roman bilingual Serbian aristocracy could come to the areas of Hungary, especially Transylvania, which supported Stephen Dragutin and then Stephen Vladislav, his son, areas under the influence of Ladislau Apor and Ladislau Kahn, both of which are related to the Serbian royal family. The expansion of Serbian civilization following Dragutin’s royal pretendence to the extinction of the Arpadian dynasty, the assimilation by it of some aristocratic Hungarian and Pechenego-Cuman elements that had integrated into the Walachian and Moldovan new aristocracy, the Orthodox homogeneity of this aristocracy, and the certain presence of the Serbo-Byzantine imperial ideology around the north-Danubian “households” makes sense to an obvious reality: Moldova and Wallachia are the state vestiges of a North Serb Kingdom, the Kingdom of Srem, founded by Dragutin, which has passed through the experience the attempt to absorb Hungary on the basis of clear dynastic succession rights. Thus, the Romanian Orthodox medieval states :Wallachia and Moldova are the rest of the posterity of Andrei III, the ultimate Arpadian, of his Serbian posterity, and the Catholic Hungary, the rest of his angevian posterity.
12:00-12:30
Petya Andreeva, Petya Andreeva, PhD, Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria. Title: Building the City, Rebuilding Identity: Aspects of Urban Fabrics in the Roman Provinces of Lower Moesia and Thrace.
The incorporation of the Thracian lands into the vast Roman administrative machine is inextricably linked to the challenges in implementing the urbanization process increasing range of opportunities open to efficient and optimal urban landscape development. Archaeological and epigraphic evidence, confirming at least the general contours of rapidly growing urban centers, proves that the whole process has been markedly intensified after the end of the Trajan’s Dacian Wars. A comprehensive scheme in urban setting includes gradual expansion of the range of monuments built, focusing on not only edifices related to the city management and administration, but also temples of patron city gods, buildings that could accommodate cultural events and sporting activities, ever higher level of monumentalization of public space, and infrastructure facilities. Venues and structures for housing dramatic, athletic, and musical contests, and Roman spectacles – theaters, amphitheaters, odeia and stadia – are also considered as hallmarks of the urbanization process, in accordance with provincial economic development. There is every chronological indication that the “city construction wave” in Lower Moesia and Thrace was in tune with other Roman provinces facilitating an urban way of life. If so, it is worth exploring in a bit more detail the extent to which the urban settings in the Thracian lands in the Roman period shared common provincial trends in building and infrastructure projects. In this context it should not be overlooked that the monumentalization process did not only gave an appropriate view of the economic and financial reality, but there was social and even cultural reason behind it that gave preference to construction and/or renovation of some buildings over other structures. Although sometimes the precise archaeological details are unfortunately obscure, the abundant epigraphic material gives quite good indication of some urban fabric patterns. The construction, renovation or contribution to building decoration is often publicly praised by honorary inscriptions referring to information for the type of construction activity and people who were involved in it, usually in terms of bearing the financial costs. The same could also hold true of the implementation of city infrastructure. This symbolic dialogue with the citizens clearly revealed what might be seen to be really appreciated by them. Hence, another question arises whether the new architectural and infrastructure solutions in the Thracian lands were commonly met with the widespread construction tendencies in the Roman Empire or they were mostly directed to the local needs and interests, mirroring the social and cultural reality of the urban areas. In other words, what was most important in shaping the urban landscape and what kind of identity could be defined as determinant of the urbanization process: provincial, urban, or ethnic.
12:30-13:00
Cedomir Antic, Associate Professor, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Title: Foreign Royalty and Balkan Thrones in the 19th century – The Case of Serbia.
During the 19th century almost all newly established national states had foreign prices as their monarchs. The sole exception were Serbia and Montenegro. This case will be analysed in this paper. Serbia and Montenegro had their own path towards independence. Whilst Serbia was established as autonomous after the Serbian uprisings 1804-1815, and during the period of Russian predominance over the Ottoman Empire, Montenegro was a semi-independent region since the Early modern period. The Austrian Empire was eager to stop any such accession in order to avoid additional new confirmation and upbringing of the two states independence. On the other hand, Serbia and Montenegro had three and, during short period of time even four, indigenous dynasties that were competing over the thrones. Finally, when the issue was almost settled, and the Karadjordjevic became the only dynasty in Serbia and the dominant over the Petovics of Montenegro, price Arthur of Connaught was proposed as future king of Serbia by some army dissidents and supporters of the extincted Obrenovics dynasty. In this paper the issue of prince Arthur alleged candidature for Serbian throne would be presented and examined. The proposed conclusion would incorporate the case of 19th century monarchies in the Balkans and hopefully would present some common features of the topic
13:00-13:30
Ranko Kozic, Associate Professor, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Title: The Enigmatic Depiction of the Phenomenon of the Second Sophistic in Philostratus and Eunapius’ Vitae Sophistarum or What is indeed the Mentioned Sophistic?
What at first sight seemed to be unessential details in the introductory passages from Philostratus and Eunapius’ Vitae sophistarum and therefore destined to be neglected in the course of the research work carried out so far, turned out, closely examined, to be capable of shedding new light on the Second Sophistic, thus enabling us to see its key postulates through a prism of the history of style, something that we hope has all the necessary potential to either challenge or dispute still largely prevailing attitudes towards both the phenomenon itself and the mission undertaken by its leading exponents chiefly regarded as decadent and sterile. Although the very first words in Philostratus’ prologue to his own Lives of the Sophists, namely tous philosophesantas en doxe tou sophisteusai, clearly indicate philosophical foundation of the movement referred to above, it is nevertheless shrouded in mystery, in so far as the very essence of the phenomenon is presented in an enigmatic way by Philostratus playing a game of hide-and-seek with the researcher by compelling him to bring in a meaningful whole seemingly incoherent formulations – otherwise scattered on several, sometimes very distant, passages from the Lives – so as yet to be able to decipher the essential relation established between philosophesai and sophisteusai in the period of the Second Sophistic. Thus the prophetic art of soothsayers and oracles, abundant, overpowering and never ending flow of words reminiscent of speech automaton as well as the faith in a firm and unshakable knowledge being as such not at all liable to both doubt and wavering cropped up as the characteristic features of sophisteusai. We shall get the answer to the question of what it is all about here after a close analysis of Dio Chrysostom’s speeches otherwise being based on assembling both the concepts of Plato’s philosophy and what has already been accepted as a universal pattern in the long periods of the Greek literary history and by the same token regarded as a truth confirmed by the experience. It is just this certainty that Dio’s speeches as well as those of the sophists par excellence exude, but Philostratus leads us yet again to a new enigma in so far as he does not even regard Dio as a sophist, something that we can understand only after having attentively studied his Life of Herodes wherein an ambivalent, allusive and enigmatic character of speech is regarded as a truly sophistical feature, which, given the unequivocalness of Dio’s formulations, was the main reason why Philostratus considered him a philosopher. Paradoxically enough, we’ll be able to ascertain what lies behind all of this and what the Second Sophistic actually is only after having attentively read the entire text of Eunapius’ Lives, something that has been largely ignored in the course of the research work carried out so far.
13:30-14:00 Pedro Fonseca, Senior Research Fellow, University of Coimbra, Portugal. Title: Anatomy, Art and Literature: Henrique De Vilhena and the Expression of the Emotions (1909-1939).
The presentation aims at providing a comprehensive view of the life and work of Portuguese anatomist Henrique de Vilhena (1879-1958), granting a particular attention to his works on the expression of the emotions. In his seminal work The expression of the emotions in man and animals (1872), Charles Darwin (1809-1882) strived to show the common origin of several physical manifestations of emotions shared by humans and other animals, using several photographs to illustrate his arguments. Late 19th century anatomy, still very much dominated by the contributions of the influential French naturalist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), showed itself particularly resistant to evolutionary ideas. In England, Darwin and the early supporters of his biological theories faced the opposition of Richard Owen (1804-1892), anatomy’s prime scientific authority of the time. Over time, however, the discipline gave way, and comparative anatomy became one of the main sources for understanding the evolution of different morphological structures (evolutionary homologies). In early 20th century Portugal, anatomy would also prove itself as an important source for the understanding and a more widespread acceptance of biological evolution. Henrique de Vilhena played a major and very innovative role in that process, by combining science and art in his assessment of anatomy and evolution. Having graduated in Medicine, he was Professor of Medicine and Anatomy at the Medical-Surgical School of Lisbon and later at the University of Lisbon. He was also a professor at the School of Fine Arts, where he taught the discipline of Artistic Anatomy. In terms of scientific research, he stood out for his work in the fields of anatomy and physical anthropology. He favored and was one of the major promoters of studies in the area of human myology (specialized area of anatomy that deals with the study of muscles and their attachments). Known in the academic circles of the time as the “Master”, he was responsible for the scientific training of some of the most respected Portuguese anatomists and anthropologists of the 20th century and leader of the internationally renowned as «school of anthropological anatomy». Endowed with an eclectic spirit and a profound erudition, he dedicated himself to other areas of knowledge besides anatomy and anthropology, such as, for example, ethnography, medical history, literary criticism and literature. Between 1909 and 1939, he published several works on the expression of emotions. His 1909 work, A expressão da colera na litteratura. (Ensaio de crítica litteraria, scientifica e artistica) (1909), highly innovative for the time, constitutes a starting point for a line of research focused on the study of the expression of emotions in literature and art. Evidencing an exceptional literary culture, Henrique de Vilhena guides the reader through several passages of classical works of World Literature in which he deduces attitudes of angry expressions.
14:00-14:30 Lunch
14:30-15:00 Muhabbet Doyran, Lecturer, Istanbul Aydın Universty, Turkey. Title: Significant Developments in Women’s Rights during the Atatürk Period (1920-1938).
Turkish woman, who stood side by side with men under equal conditions throughout history, started wearing the hijab, were entrapped in their houses with their rights revoked during the Ottoman Empire. Turkish women also struggled for independency under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in saving the lands of the country occupied by the imperialists. Many legal arrangements, especially the Civil Law, were desired for Turkish woman with their rights secured and liberated during the period of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who closely followed the modern world, knew various languages , paid special visits to European countries, read a lot of books, was fluent in French, German and English. Particular emphasis was placed on the education of women in the society, educators from abroad were introduced and a new education system was established, students were sent abroad for education. In a very short time, women had many rights before their contemporaries.
15:00-15:30
Kenneth Moore, Senior Lecturer, Teesside University, UK. Title: The Curious Case of Iphis: Ovid’s Accidental Discovery of Gender Dysphoria.
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is one of the many narratives which are open to interpretation. It may as well have the characteristics of a love story, of a feminist manifesto or of a bildungsroman. Nevertheless, we should also consider it as being a series of traumatic events that lead to an ongoing case of emotional manipulation. The thesis of this paper revolves around the idea of trauma and the inability to differentiate between love and dependence upon the partner. I will also discuss Hegel’s theory on the slave-master relation, which he presents in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). I will analyse the psychosomatic and emotional components displayed by the two main characters, following the theories of Judith Lewis Herman as presented in Trauma and Recovery. The Aftermath of Violence—from domestic abuse to political terror (1997) and I will refer to several academic articles, including M. Lonegans’s “Cognitive behavioural therapy for PTSD: the role of complex PTSD on treatment outcome” (2014) and Nancy Pell’s “Resistance, Rebellion and Marriage” (1977), in an attempt to answer the three main questions that build the thesis of this paper: (1) What are the sources of trauma for Jane Eyre? (2) Is Edward Rochester an emotional manipulator? (3) Does Jane and Rochester’s relationship resemble that of a master and his slave?
16:00-16:30
Scott Kaufman, Professor, Francis Marion University, USA. Title: Waterways to the World: The Expansion of the Panama and Suez Canals.
In 2007, the Panama Canal began an expansion project designed to allow it to handle ships that had become too large for the original canal to support. Seven years later, the Suez Canal began a similar undertaking. These events were not coincidental. Rather, they reflected a competition between the two waterways to win international shipping clients. This paper, which will use the expansion projects as a starting point, will examine how this international competition has affected trade routes and the growth (or decline) of port cities. Furthermore, both canals have generated concerns that they will permit invasive species to overtake other fauna, thus changing local and regional ecological systems; the expansion projects have only served to heighten those concerns. This paper will conclude by considering what the future holds for these two waterways, particularly during the global economic downturn generated by the coronavirus pandemic.
16:30-17:00 David Philip Wick, Director, Arts, Humanities and Education Division, ATINER & Retired Professor of History, Gordon College, USA. Title: Scholar, Smuggler, Mercenary, Thief – Brief Glimpses of the Building and Breaking of the great Library at Pergamon.
The library of Pergamum (Pergamon) is often listed as the second or third of the legendary libraries created in the ancient world, a truly unique achievement in particular because the conquest of the Pergamum fortress and design of the new city there were a groundbreaking innovation – Philetarios (and his adopted son Eumenes) use what was essentially the last amassed payment gold from Alexander’s armies after his death to conceive a new planned pseudo-polis and capital that would be both a destination resort for the elite, AND a destination college/university, a concept competing with Alexandria (though the educational approach differed in each case). The university idea would require an elite library, though, and that seems to have come either from the hiring of Aristotle’s ‘Peripatetic School’ heir from Athens as consultant (or even briefly head of school) or his own protege Neleus, and with those hirings, the movement (almost the theft?) of a major portion of Aristotle’s library. According to Strabo, this was housed (or in some pre-agreed way ‘hidden’ from appropriation by the Pergamene kings near, but not in, Pergamon, while the town built a library proper in the new campus on the freshly created resort/city’s acropolis. Over time, as the school and city prospered, the library (like the brilliant features of the resort) attracted the attention of predators, and suffered a slowdown in revenues. By the last century of the old era a local warlord coveted special scientific works in the library, and the revenue of what was left of the regime, as did the welfare system of the Roman Republic. In the 80s of the Republic’s last century Pergamon was destroyed in a series of aggressive moves by the Anatolian warlord Mithridates and the Roman renegade Sulla, and a notorious “antiquities (including MSS) smuggler” and pirate named Apellicon snatched what was left of the library for resale only to have it fall into Sulla’s hands. The last of the library’s story followed Sulla and his return to the west to attack his own culture. The key here (and the link to the threat libraries and archives face today) has to do with the tendency great collections of information have to be monetized and converted by business or power players to saleable goods. Accessible libraries are any shared culture’s irreplaceable medium of growth, and when shared culturally as a part of open education, this role becomes even more critical. How many links we find between this story and our own world of restrictions made ‘normal by COVID and the cult of quantifiable, turnstile-justified education we will have decide in our own schools
17:00-17:30
Edward Laws, Professor, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA. John Kilgallon, Research Associate, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA. Title: Athletic Medicine, Training, and Politics in Ancient Greece: Galen vs. Gymnasticus.
Often thought to be one of the most recent developments in the medical world, the field of Athletic medicine has existed since the earliest instances of organized sport.[1] A culture whose political and military dominance spread over a millennium, the Ancient Greeks laid the groundwork for both modern medicine and athletics in the forms of Hippocratic medicine and the Olympic games. As paradigms in their time, Hippocratic medicine and the Olympics had lasting impacts on how society has come to practice medicine and sport. Inherently intertwined in the rise of Greek culture, these two disciplines shared a strong relationship with each other, as well as with Ancient Greek politics and society. The growth of Hippocratic medicine had a profound effect on athletic training and dieting, or gymnastikê, in Ancient Greece. In 5th Century B.C., the Olympics had reached the peak of their popularity, coinciding with the emergence of the Hippocratic period.[2] Before this time, there were very few organized sporting events in Greece; however, with the growth and acceptance of Hippocrates’s holistic view of medicine, strongly promoting exercise and dieting, an emphasis on training in sport emerged. The desire to prove victorious in these games, however, turned sinister, and by the 4th Century A.D. the Olympics had been abolished; laziness, bribery, and doping had corrupted the games’ sanctity. During the interceding period between the rise and fall of the Ancient Olympiad, there was an ever-increasing effort to maximize each athlete’s potential, based on the combination of foods they ate, methods with which they trained, and careful management of the Hippocratic “humors.” As contemporaries in the 2nd Century A.D., the Greek philosophers Galen and Philostratus shared many of the same concerns about the state of athletic training and medicine, but they treated the practice itself with different levels of respect. Galen condemned the practice of employing gymnastês and paidotribês (athletic dieticians and trainers, respectively), while Philostratus, in his work Gymnasticus, argued for their importance. Gone were the days in which sport reflected valor on the battlefield; it had become an excuse for luxurious overeating and an arena for bribery.[3] Yet, Philostratus contended that athletic training was a form of wisdom, or sophia, and that although the practice had been corrupted, it was imperative for Greek society that it be restored. The decline of Greek physical prowess, he suggested, mirrored Greece’s loss of political and military power due to Roman occupation; he was hopeful, however, for a prosperous Greek future, which would include the restoration of the sanctity of sport, medicine, and the athlete’s body.
20:30-22:30 Greek Night
Tuesday 1 June 2021
08:30-10:00 Urban Walk
10.00-10:30 Hirofumi Iwamoto, PhD Student, Kyushu University, Japan. Title: Turkish Jews and their Imperial Legacy: ‘Citizen, Speak Turkish!’ Campaign and Jewish Intellectuals in Early Republican Period.
This paper analyze attempt of two Jewish intellectuals, Tekin Alp (1883-1961), Turkish nationalist, and Avram Galanti (1873-1961), professor of ancient Near Eastern history at Istanbul University, making a place for Jews in Turkish society during “Citizen, Speak Turkish!” campaign at 1928. In the 1920s, Republican Turkey paid great attention to the problem of dissemination of Turkish language in order to establish the Turkish nation-state. Under such conditions, ‘Citizen, speak Turkish!’ campaign was started by the committee of law faculty students at Istanbul University in January 1928. The original purpose of this campaign was demanding all non-Turkish citizens of speaking the Turkish language. Soon it changed, however, and many Non-Muslim, especially Jews were harassed in public. Some supporters of the campaign started to claim that the Government should make Jewish citizens, to speak Turkish by law or to deport them from Turkey. In this environment, two Jewish intellectuals, Tekin Alp and Avram Galanti published books. Tekin Alp issued ‘Türkleştirme (Turkification) and Galanti released Vatandaş, Türkçe Konuş! (Citizen, Speak Turkish!). Both of them believed Turkish Jews would become ‘Turks’ but they held different views of Turkification. Both of them dreamed Jews had become ‘Turk,’ however, they had different views. Tekin Alp pointed out that having a belief ‘I am a Turk’ was an only and essential element to be a true citizen in Turkey. Therefore, He contended that anyone who wanted to be a ‘Turk’ should have made much effort to accept Turkish culture and language. On the other hand, Galanti explained why Turkish-Jews cannot speak the Turkish language as historical perspectives and he concluded the government should have improved the language education in schools. Seemingly different but there are many similarities of their claims due to succeed historical view of Jewish patriotism in Ottoman empire. Both of them had same historical view of Turkish Jews and tried to differentiate them from other Non-Muslim, especially from Christians. Their difference of social status of Tekin Alp and Galanti made distinction between their opinions. Tekin Alp was member of circle Turkish nationalists and he published his book when Jews was attacked by the supporters of campaign. He tried to established a define of nation based on civic-nationalism and change social situation. By contrast, Galanti had high-profile professor not only in Turkey but also other nations, in addition he was one of prominent member of Jewish society in Turkey. That’s why he had to carry his argument carefully and tried to reduce responsibility of Turkish Jews for failure of Turkification.
10.30-11:00 Alin Goron, PhD Student, “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania. Title: Countryside Cinema in Romania during communist regime (1948-1958).
In the post-war era, Romania was a predominantly agrarian country. Almost 80% of Romania’s population lived in rural areas. It is easy to understand that tehe communist regime, installed after the Second World War, focused its efforts on educating the villagers according to the new ideological dogmas. Cultural homes were the main repositories of mass culture in rural areas. Efforts to bring cinema to villages have materialized through the purchase of film projection equpment, either form government or local funds. Where this was not possible, the film caravan was brought to villages. Among the films we mention, „The Path of the Kolkoz”, or „The Undefeated”, a production of director M. Donskoi, which depicted the episode of the Soviet struggles against teh nazi occupation. Many of these film productions belonged to the Soviets and had ideological content, but also themes inspired by the Second World War. In this paper we want to highlight the cintribution of cinema in rural areas to the culturalization of people, separating the ideological component from the practical one in adult education policies of the communist regime. We will also make a comparison with other states in Central and Eastern Europe, neighbors of Romania, such as Hungary, Bulgaria but especially Yugoslavia, which experienced a different path by the conflict between Joseph Borz Tito and Stalin. For documentation we used archival sources belonging to the Central National Historical Archives of Romania, but also interviews, memoirs, articles and publications.
11:00-11:30
Zvjezdana Sikiric Assouline, Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Title: Witch Trials in the Early Modern Age Croatia.
In common perception witch hunts are mostly associated with ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages, but the historical truth is that they are a phenomenon characteristic of the Early Modern Age, especially when it comes to group trials (as opposed to trials of individuals in earlier times). The increase in numbers of witches trialed and convicted as well as the use of torture which then became a standard part of the court procedure in those trials, can, paradoxically, be linked to progress achieved in the new era, such as extended use of relevant books (in this case developing a theory about witches operating in companies and not alone), and progress in the theory and the practice of law, which, favoring the accused in a trial, demands thorough investigation and no conviction brought without a previous confession of guilt (resulting in torture, as a means of obtaining the required confession). As in the rest of Europe, witch trials were present all around the Habsburg Empire, but in Croatia they seem to have been particularly pronounced, to the point of catching the attention and provoking the concern of Empress Maria Theresia. From the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 18th century documents show proof of more than 200 women being sentenced for witchcraft in the rather small Kingdom of Croatia, with trials gaining momentum in the 1730s and 1740s. Maria Theresia finally ordered that one already convicted witch be brought to Vienna and examined by her private doctors. In her manner of an experienced ruler, she found a brilliant diplomatic solution, ordering Croatian authorities in her letter of 1758 that all future sentences involving witches should be submitted, along with all documentation of the trial, to the court commission in Vienna for evaluation before execution. Although she did not officially ban witch trials, the complicated procedure prescribed by this letter de facto put an end to any further aspirations of local courts in Croatia to put witches to trial.
11:30-12:00
Sanja Knežević, Associate Professor, University of Zadar, Croatia. Title: Intertextual Relationships between Federico Garcia Lorca and Croatian Modern Poetry.
The work “Intertextual Connections of Federico Garcia Lorca and Croatian Modern Poetry” will analyze the intertextual and quotation relationship between the cult Spanish poet and poets who marked the beginning of a completely new development path of Croatian poetry in the second half of the 20th century. These are the poetic opuses of Jure Kaštelan (collection „Pijetao na krovu“), Drago Ivanišević (collection „Zemlja pod nogama“), Vesna Parun (collection „Zore i vihori“), Nikola Milićević (collection „Ruke pune mošta“) and Joja Ricov (collection „Marabunta“). These are poetic opuses that introduced a specific Lorquian poetics of Surrealism into Croatian poetry, merging it with the Croatian tradition of Mediterraneanism (thematization of Mediterranean landscape images and symbols in the service of reflexivity). At the stylistic level, the impact on versification (rhythm), colored language, metaphoricity, and pictoriality will be analyzed. Although the influences of F. G. Lorca have been observed in all poets in literary history so far, the citation and intertextual connections themselves have not been explored. The aim of the research is to show how each of the mentioned Croatian poets built his original method of intertextual connections with Lorca’s poetry.
12:00-12:30
Nefeli Gkatsou, Master Student, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Title: The Figure of Speech from the Original to the Translated Text: Traditional Verse Poetry VS Free Verse Poetry and Poetry in Prose.
The main purpose of this short paper is to examine how the figures of speech (e.g. metaphor, personification, antithesis, assonance, hyperbaton, chiasmus, hyperbole) are translated from original French poems into Modern Greek. The short paper is part of the author’s PhD thesis: The figure of speech from the original to the translated text. Due to the wide range of French literature, the study is focused on selected works of francophone poets of the 19th and the early 20th century. The originality of the research becomes clear from the fact that, although studies of the figures of speech have been carried out in original texts, the figures of speech have never been studied in a complete scientific research setting in translated texts. The significance of the results of the research lies in the fact that the translated literature eventually becomes a part of the Greek literary production. One of our research questions was whether the preservation of the figures of speech is affected by the form of poetry. In our research we included traditional verse poetry (e.g. V. Hugo, C. Baudelaire, M. Desbordes–Valmore, P. Éluard, A. de Lamartine, L. de Lisle, S. Mallarmé, G. de Nerval, P. Verlaine, P. Valéry), as well as free verse poetry and poetry in prose (e.g. A. Artaud, R. Char, Y. Bonnefoy, A. Breton, R. Desnos, P.–J. Jouve, V. Larbaud, S.–J. Perse, J. Prévert, C. de Lautréamont). The following questions were taken into consideration: Do the metric and the rhyme affect the way translators treat the figures of speech? How is the translation of the figures of speech affected as we move from traditional to modern poetry? Using examples, we draw statistical conclusions that show a significant difference in the rendition of the figures of speech in various forms of poetry. The form of poetry not only affects the rendition of the figures of speech but it also appears to be one of the most influential factors. Thus, the answer to our research question as to whether the form of the text affects the figures of speech is positive. Furthermore, we collected multiple examples of figures of speech that could have been rendered to the translated text, even in the case of a traditional verse poem. Nevertheless, this was not achieved for various reasons. In conclusion, the lack of complete compatibility between Greek and French language often makes it difficult to preserve the figures of speech; however, as it turns out, in all forms of poetry, the majority of the figures of speech remain in the translation. We strongly believe that this happens because the figures of speech are an integral element of poetry whether it concerns an original or a translated text.
12:30-13:00
Paola Partenza, Associate Professor, D’Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara, Italy. Title: Travels in the Mediterranean: Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Mani.
13:00-13:30
Rytis Jonaitis, Research Fellow, The Lithuanian Institute of History, Lithuania. Title: Intercultural Dialogue in the Middle Ages: Christian Cemetery in Pagan Vilnius.
14:30-15:00
Irma Kaplunaite, Research Fellow, The Lithuanian Institute of History, Lithuania. Title: Between Greeks and Latins: Pilies Street in Medieval Vilnius.
My talk analyzes the development of the public health institutions in Italy in the Twentieth Century. The aim is to understand how the Italian State faced the health problem during the three important phases of its history: liberal age, fascism and republican age. A fundamental moment is certainly constituted by the set up in 1888 of the General Directorate of Public Health within the Ministry of the Interior. It will be destined to have a long life in the Italian bureaucratic and administrative system. Its creation intended, above all, to answer more effectively the needs of the population and the growing demand of social services caused by the country’s economic and industrial development at the end of the nineteenth century. An institutional level, the General Directorate for Public Health is therefore part of the process of the making of the Italian Welfare State, which began to take shape in that period, similar to the main European Countries. During the Giolitti era there was a consolidation and extension of the functions in the health system in the public administration, with a strong increase in personnel both at central and peripheral level. The Directorate also survived the years of fascism, which tried to include the health policy in its own totalitarian project, aimed at bringing Italy back to the greatness of Imperial Rome, giving it a central role among the great Western powers through a series of initiatives in support of the birth rate and the family. On a legislative level, a very important law was the “testo unico” on the health laws in 1934. Although the new provisions were exalted by fascism, they seem to differ little from the previous legislation, especially in the way of understanding health, still linked to a police function and safeguarding public order. An important turning point was in 1945 when the set up of the High Commission for Hygiene and Public Health replaced the General Directorate of Public Health. The law entrusted the new institution with the tasks of coordination and technical supervision of the health authorities present in Italy. Naturally also the events of the High Commission are linked to the development of the Italian Welfare system, which, after the Second World War, followed different directions than other Western European Countries. My report highlights in particular the differences with Great Britain, where, in the same period, the Attlee government approved the National Health Service Act. The Italian health administration remained in fact characterized by a high degree of confusion and overlapping of competences with other institutional subjects. This situation has been the object of much debate between political parties, the majority of them pushed for the set up, also in Italy, of the Ministry of Health. This result was reached only in 1958, but not all problems were solved. The foundation of the National Health Service was even later. It was set up in March 1978, when the first signs of the Welfare crisis were already being felt in Europe.
15:30-16:00
Marco Comunetti, PhD Student, University of Genoa, Italy. Title: Homer and Euripides: Remarks on Mythological Innovation in the Scholia.
This paper aims to examine two different exegetical strategies that ancient scholars adopted to explain Euripides’ mythological innovation and variation with respect to Homer, through a selection of examples drawn from scholiastic corpora. The poetic treatment of myth was a much debated topic of Hellenistic and Roman scholarship. Grammarians paid specific attention to the divergence of a narrative from the traditional or common account and their attitudes towards this issue were various, depending on both the characteristics of the texts analysed and the knowledge or interests of the commentators themselves. Distinct approaches reflect numerous critical trends, which produced multiple results. For the sake of clarity these can be arranged in two categories, bearing in mind that well defined demarcations are not always possible due to the nature of the scholia, which preserve the work of ancient scholars in a fragmentary and scattered condition. On the one hand, there are neutral annotations that, e.g., indicate the mythological variants between Homer and Euripides as a simple fact, without delving into the subject, or attribute to the tragedian the use of a source different from the Homeric poems. On the other hand, there are more articulate comments expressing or implying value judgments, often blaming but at times, on the contrary, defending or even appreciating the mythological alteration and thus the poetic invention introduced by Euripides, whose origin and reason they attempt to recognize. To the latter class belong two interpretative methodologies distinguished in terms of theoretical assumptions, critical tools and explanatory objectives: these are at the core of the investigation. The first approach considers Euripides a (mis-) reader and exegete of Homer: the tragedian, on occasion equated to the νεώτεροι, regards an Homeric passage as the reference text, but fails to understand its wording correctly; he therefore reproduces uncritically rather than faithfully the model, even though driven by a genuine impulse to emulate. This circumstance, where the Homeric poems are understood as the correct source of a mythological narrative, depicts Euripides as a sort of commentator of the epic prototype and his deviation from it as the locus of an (erroneous) exegesis. The second approach evaluates the work of the tragedian comparing it with the Homeric poems by means and in the light of concepts of literary criticism. According to this perspective, Euripides creates a good or bad product depending on whether its innovation achieves a certain poetic result: while an improbable or unrealistic description of a character is contested, a strategy to enhance the emotional impact of the dramatic circumstance is acknowledged and perceived as a careful and conscious operation, hence possibly praised. In these contexts recur terms such as the adjective ἀπίθανος or the adverb εἰκότως, which finally reflect an Aristotelian conception of literature, finding correspondence in the categories enucleated by the philosopher within his Poetics.
16:00-16:30
Martin Malcolm Elbl, Researcher, York University, Canada. Title: The Jewish Quarter of Palma de Mallorca, 1390-1400: Violent Destruction, Socio-Economic Textures, and Urban Topography.
In the 1760s and 1770s, the British identified several development plans for their colonies of East and West Florida. One of the most significant, and persistent, of these plans was the construction of a plantation society. Unlike contemporary colonial American communities, Florida offered opportunities for Anglo-American elites to test out settlement schemes. My paper will trace not only the story of New Smyrna, but its larger implications for the crystallization of racial thinking in the late eighteenth century Atlantic world. Local elites deployed the memory of New Smyrna to argue for the better treatment of indentured servants while simultaneously calling for the further exploitation of African bodies. Andrew Turnbull started as a Scottish physician but became interested in the potential profits of East Florida. Turnbull proposed creating a plantation colony in East Florida, based on South Carolina as a model. Rather than use African slavery, as suggested by others, Turnbull insisted on deploying Mediterranean peoples from Italy and Greece. Turnbull contended that Mediterranean people, in spite of their status as “white” in eighteenth-century North America, were (due to their home climate) suitable for plantation labor. Furthermore, he used racist beliefs about African inferiority to promote the spread of white colonists. The colony faced many obstacles, and was unable to overcome the ravages of disease, mismanagement, and poor planning—even after introducing enslaved African labor. New Smyrna’s botched settlement changed demographic, social, and political life the relatively small colony for decades to come. However, the significance of New Smyrna had little to do with its immediate aftermath. Instead, the true legacy of New Smyrna is the expansion of African slavery. Elites saw New Smyrna as an experiment. Contemporary observers, and those that came after, combined the New Smyrna experiment with Enlightenment theories about racialized biology. Floridian elites and government officials subsequently argued that the failed colony of New Smyrna proved whites were intellectually and biologically unfit for plantation labor. However, Africans (who faced a similarly deadly disease environment and labor regime) were deigned as biologically fit. Later settlers poured into East Florida (and from there many went to the Caribbean), deploying this assumption in their settlement plans. Ultimately, these planters would establish Florida’s plantation economy, which continues to shape Florida’s contemporary culture and socioeconomic inequalities.
17:00-17:30
Vina Tirven-Gadum, Associate Professor, Athabasca University, Canada. Title: The Original Title as “What the Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdown has Revealed about the Class Divide in France” It is now “Covid-19 and the Parisian Elites.
On March 16th, 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his government would impose severe travel restrictions on the population, in order to contain the spread of the corona virus. Without ever using the word “lock-down” or “confinement” he went on to say that these unprecedented measures were necessary to minimise contact and contamination among the French people. Travel movement would only be allowed for essential services e.g. for those needing medical care, and for those where teleworking was not possible. The message was clear: “stay home” or risk paying a hefty fine. Consequently, many affluent and bourgeois Parisians fled the city in a panic, and went into isolation at their vacation homes in the French countryside. Among them were two highly acclaimed French authors: Leïla Slimani and Marie Darrieussecq, both winners of the prestigious “Prix Goncourt” (France’s highest literary award). From their self-imposed isolation, they then published their lock-down diaries in the French newspapers Le Monde and Le Point. These diaries caused an immediate uproar and unleashed an outpouring of resentment from the less affluent French populace. The online backlash, which was quick and vitriolic, accused both writers of “intellectual elitism”, of being oblivious to the struggles of ordinary French citizens. One fellow writer even compared Slimani to Marie Antoinette. What these lockdown diaries have revealed the deep divide between the haves and have nots in France, and the kind of class war that exists between the “elites” (i.e., those who have the leisure and comfort to idealize their isolation) and the disadvantaged majority, who do not have the leisure to leave their cramped quarters in big cities like Paris and to flee to their secondary residences in the countryside.
