Corfu's Asian Art Museum

The Durrell School of Corfu opens each annual session with a symposium that examines themes of importance to the Durrells and to our world. The first symposium in 2002 took "Understanding Misunderstanding" as its central theme and it included distinguished leaders in politics, economics, the arts and environmental studies among its participants.

Keynote speakers in 2004 include: Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University professor and cultural theorist; Lee Durrell from the Durrell World Wildlife Trust; and David Bellamy, internationally acclaimed ecologist and botanist.

Previous participants have included: John Brandon of the Asia Foundation; Elemer Hankiss, dean of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Marwan Bishara from the American Univerisity of Paris; and the environmentalist David Bellamy.

The Venetian Winged Lion

CALL FOR SEMINAR PAPERS

THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN GREECE: POLITICS, LITERATURE, SOCIETY
(21-27 May 2006)

The Durrell School of Corfu will hold a seminar on the topic 'The Emergence of Modern Greece: Politics, Literature, Society' at its Library and Study Centre in Corfu, 21-27 May 2006.

The formation of the modern Greek state since independence from Ottoman rule in 1831 provides a model of territorial and democratic growth and recession during the past 175 years. This seminar will examine the development of modern Greece under the rubrics of Politics, Literature and Society and we invite contributions on the following topics (this is not exclusive and any other topics not listed will be considered by the seminar committee, with the exception of ecological topics, which will be the subject of a separate seminar in September 2006).

The seminar will be moderated by Sir Michael Llewellyn Smith (former British Ambassador to Greece) and Roderick Beaton (Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature, King’s College London) with the distinguished participation of Nikos Papandreou. Priority will be given to proposals relating to the Ionian islands.

Corfu's Rue de Rivoli

Politics

• Philhellenism in the 1820s and after
• The war of independence
• The Greek monarchy 1831-1974
• The expansion of Greece, 1864-1947
• The Megali Idea
• The Balkan wars
• The first world war
• The Anatolian campaign 1920-22
• The 1930s
• The second world war
• The civil war
• The Cyprus crisis 1955-74
• Military rule 1967-1974

• The nineteenth-century novel
• Transition from katharevousa to demotic
• The poets of the Ionian islands and Romanticism
• Theotokas' 'Free Spirit' and its consequences
• The poetry of Seferis and Elytis
• C.P. Cavafy
• Themes in fiction since 1960
• The Greek diaspora
• Literature in Cyprus
• National identity in Greek literature
• Political content of Greek literature
• Publishing and translation

• Transfer of populations between Greece and Turkey, 1923
• Reconstruction of Greek society after the second world war
• Consequences of the civil war
• Repatriation of persons evacuated from Greece during the civil war
• The Greek economy since 1945
• Italian and Turkish culture in Greek society
• The Jewish population of Greece before and after the second world war
• Urban-rural relations