News in the Centre for Hellenic Studies
Dr Polina Tambakaki shortlisted for literary prize
May 2012 Dr Polina Tambakaki, Visiting Lecturer in Modern Greek Literature at the Centre for Hellenic Studies, has had her book
The ‘Musical Poetics’ of George Seferis shortlisted for shortlisted for the Critical Writing Prize by the literary journal
Diavazo. Her book is the first thorough study of the role played by music in the poetic theory and practice of George Seferis, 1963 Nobel laureate and the first major Greek modernist poet. The book was published in June 2011 by Domos and has already been favourably reviewed.
For more information about the prize, see
Diavazo.
World-leading expert on Greek drama Professor Edith Hall joins Department
April 2012 The Department of Classics and the Centre for Hellenic Studies are delighted to welcome as a new colleague Professor Edith Hall, a world-leading expert on Greek drama and its modern reception. Her ground-breaking work in this field has earned her an international reputation as an original and radical scholar and she has now extended her innovative approach to other classical subjects, including the reception and understanding of slavery, as well as to modern performance studies. The arrival of Professor Hall significantly enhances our already strong profile in these areas and we look forward to developing new research projects with her.
Book Publication: Radical Platonism in Byzantium: Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon
April 2012 Dr Niketas Siniossoglou has published his latest book entitled Radical Platonism in Byzantium: Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon. Byzantium has recently attracted much attention, but principally among cultural, social and economic historians. This book shifts the focus to philosophy and intellectual history, exploring the thought-world of visionary reformer Gemistos Plethon (c.1355–1452). It argues that Plethon brought to their fulfilment latent tendencies among Byzantine humanists towards a distinctive anti-Christian and pagan outlook. His magnum opus, the pagan Nomoi, was meant to provide an alternative to and escape-route from the disputes over the Orthodoxy of Gregory Palamas and Thomism. It was also a groundbreaking reaction to the bankruptcy of a pre-existing humanist agenda and to aborted attempts at the secularisation of the State, whose cause Plethon had himself championed in his two utopian Memoranda. Inspired by Plato, Plethon's secular utopianism and paganism emerge as the two sides of a single coin. On another level, the book challenges anti-essentialist scholarship that views paganism and Christianity as social and cultural constructions.
Book Publication: Law Custom and Justice in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
March 2012 The Proceedings of 2008 Byzantime Colloquium have published as the Law, Custom, and Justics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, edited by Dr Alice Rio. This collection of essays examines the relationship between custom and written law, as well as the extent to which custom might or might not be used as a legal argument in court, in late antiquity and the early middle ages, in a comparative perspective. It includes chapters on the Roman empire (Caroline Humfress); Byzantium (Peter Sarris, Rosemary Morris); the Sasanian empire (Simon Corcoran); and the early medieval West (Peter Heather, Matthew Innes).
The book is available for purchase in the King's College London Online Store
Book Publication: Blue-Water Empire: the British in the Mediterranean since 1800
January 2012 Professor Robert Holland's new book, Blue-Water Empire: the British in the Mediterranean since 1800, appeared in hardback under the imprint of Allen Lane. It will appear as a paperback with Penguin in January 2013.
Blue-Water Empire traces the fluctuations of the British presence in the region over two hundred years. The book has a recurring focus on British interactions with both the growth of the modern Greek state and with the history of Cyprus as a British colony, set in a broad regional perspective.