Centre for Hellenic Studies Newsletter 31 December 2020 Director’s Report The year 2020 will go down in history as the year of the global for the first week of November 2020. The wealth of today’s outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Already by late January 2020, online resources and virtual museum tours do not offer the same concerns about the spread of COVID-19 started to affect our travel experience, but they still offer good talking points for plans and activities. Let’s be honest, that was not the worst of our classroom discussions. We are grateful to all the foundations and fears. Since then, the pandemic has upended how we live, how organisations that have helped to build such rich resources over we work, how we teach, and how we interact with one another. the past several years. No individual, institution or organisation has been left untouched. This has been a time of ‘social distancing’, but what a misnomer While the focus was, rightly, on mitigating the immediate crisis, that term is. We may be adhering to the new rules of physical it soon became clear that so many things would, and should, distancing but keeping our audience intellectually engaged change well beyond the extraordinary lockdowns of the spring and socially close has been of utmost importance to us. We are and autumn of 2020. Since then, many colleagues and students at King’s have been doing incredible work to help shape real- working apart from one another, but we remain committed to time responses to the crisis. Research teams here have been in the building strong community ties, in which CHS and the Koraes forefront of the latest scientific developments. King’s Arts and Chair remain active and visible. In fostering this community, Humanities have participated in in-depth studies on the public’s CHS, Classics, and the King’s community endorse the ideals of perceptions and the government’s predictions on the coronavirus diversity and inclusion, and it is making every effort to support pandemic, and they have examined how such reactions have our junior scholars, who are facing the most challenging academic informed attitudes and patterns of conduct, here and overseas. By job market of recent decades. This work, these ideals, represent late autumn of 2020, and as we keep navigating the unpredictable the ways in which CHS and the Koraes Chair are responding to world created by the new conditions, our work continues, albeit the changing new landscape in the wake of COVID-19. We will often remotely, since King’s has had to close our building on the continue this mission as we enter into the spring 2021 semester. Strand for long weeks at a time and has also reallocated many of Gonda Van Steen, December 2020 its resources (stemming the decline in tuition income). The Centre for Hellenic Studies had to cancel March through December 2020 events on campus, but it also promptly announced a series of academic and cultural activities that our students, colleagues, friends, and supporters have been able to follow online, on their own time and initiative. Thanks to the hard work and patience of our shared staff, and especially of Ed Stevens, Mark Johnson, Peter Swallow and Abigail Walker, CHS and the Koraes Chair have kept moving forward, supporting writers and ‘art workers’ (as per the newly coined Greek term) as well as scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Therefore, this report does not dwell on what was necessarily cancelled but focuses on what we could and can still enjoy, from the comfort of our homes. Thus CHS steered its followers on our Twitter page (@kingsCHS) to our Hellenic Fridays, featuring ‘slices of Hellenic culture online’. Sadly, we needed to cancel the Rumble trip to Greece, originally scheduled Students on the October 2019 Rumble Fund trip, Old City Rhodes INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD CHS MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE The Board held its annual meeting on 6 February 2020, the day of the The Management Committee of CHS consists of the following members: Dr Runciman Lecture. Chaired by the Principal, Professor Edward Byrne, its John Kittmer, Dr Daniel Orrells, Dr Tassos Papacostas, Dr Emily Pillinger, external members are Dr Dionysios Kapsalis (Director, Cultural Foundation Professor Michael Trapp, and Professor Gonda Van Steen. of the National Bank, Athens), Professor Paschalis M. Kitromilides (Professor Emeritus of the University of Athens), Dr Tassos Leventis FKC (Director of the A.G. Leventis Foundation), Professor Sir Michael Llewellyn-Smith (former HM Ambassador to Greece and a CHS Visiting Professor), and Professor Richard P. Martin (Stanford). PUBLICATIONS BENEFACTIONS ROUTLEDGE SERIES: PUBLICATIONS OF THE CHS LEGACY GIFTS, PRIZES, STUDENTSHIPS AND many publications. Since January 2020, the The general editor of the CHS Routledge SPONSORED STUDY TOURS competition has been open to all BA, MA (formerly Ashgate) Series is Professor In February 2020, the Centre for Hellenic and PhD students currently enrolled in any Michael Trapp (Classics). Further Studies received an extremely generous faculty of any England-based university. information about this series is available at: donation from the Egon family, the late The next submission deadline is Friday, 15 https://www.routledge.com/Publications-of-the- Nicholas and Matti Egon, to secure the legacy January 2021. The award of £500 will be Centre-for-Hellenic-Studies-Kings-College-London/ of the annual Runciman Lecture at King’s. announced in late February 2021. Please book-series/CHS. CHS is eagerly anticipating the 30th Annual also save the date of the third Niki Marangou Runciman Lecture, which will be delivered Annual Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Mr. Co-editors Stefanos Geroulanos, John by our CHS colleague, Professor David Ricks. Candounas and co-organised with King’s Kittmer, and Polina Tambakaki will add The lecture titled ‘The Shot Heard round Centre for Hellenic Studies. This third Niki to the CHS Publications Series a much- the World: The Greek Revolution in Poetry’ Marangou Lecture will be given by Roderick anticipated volume on Cavafy, entitled C. will be one of many high-calibre lectures to Beaton, Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern P. Cavafy: Poetics and Reception – Music, follow, far into the future. Greek and Byzantine History, Language History and the Arts. The volume will contain and Literature. The title of his presentation new material and some chapters based on is ‘1821 and European Philhellenism’ (in the presentations given in London at the Greek). The exact time and location of the January 2018 conference ‘C. P. Cavafy: lecture will be 13 October 2021, at 19.00, The Poetics of History and the Music of in the Temporary Exhibition Room of the Poetry’. This conference was organised Leventis Gallery in Nicosia, Cyprus. Please by CHS, in collaboration with the Athens save the date and help us spread the news Conservatoire and the Hellenic Centre, about this generous student prize. London, under the auspices of the President of the Hellenic Republic. Dr Tambakaki and In Spring 2022, the Rumble Fund trip Roderick Beaton, then Koraes Professor, will return to Athens and will include were the lead organisers. The new volume visits to sites related to the Greek War of will be dedicated to the memory of Angelos Independence. On the general itinerary are: Delivorrias, the late director of the Benaki visits to the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum, who delivered his last major Museum, a guided visit of the Stavros academic talk at the 2018 conference. Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, a biking tour or walking tour of the Ilyssos Dr John Muir is currently preparing volume river bank and discussions about urban 21 in the CHS Series. His volume will planning, a meeting with Greek students present the first full English translation, from the University of Athens, etc. This fully with introduction and notes, of the travel funded trip to Greece for students of the journal written by Andronikos (Nikander) Classics Department is made possible by the Noukkios, and it will bear the title of A Greek generosity of the Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund. in Renaissance Europe. The 2022 trip will again form part of a module ‘Engaging Greece’, taught by One more volume is in preparation, the Professor Gonda Van Steen. As always, the collection Locating the Daemonic, edited by Department of Classics and CHS are very Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe and Emmanuela The A.G. Leventis Foundation has committed to grateful to our various partners in Greece, Bakola. fund our collaborative planning for events which include the British School at Athens. and activities marking the 1821 bicentennial Our students themselves provide the best OTHER BOOKS BY CHS MEMBERS of the Greek War of Independence. The full testimony of what these trips have meant to Professor Emerita Judith Herrin has been programme will consist of 21 events and is them. Students’ testimonies (and videos) studying the role of Ravenna in mediating the called ‘21 in 21: Celebrating 2021 in 21 Encounters’. can be found at: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/classics/ interactions between Byzantine and Western The programme, which will offer lectures, about/rumble-fund-trip-201819. For further Medieval culture. Her latest book, Ravenna: panel discussions, conferences, and a couple information about the Rumble Fund and Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe of walking tours around Greek London, now the activities it supports in the fields of Art (Penguin) appeared in late August 2020 and has its own website at https://21in21.co.uk/. and Archaeology, please contact Professor has already been acclaimed in the Financial See below, page 6, for more details. Michael Squire ([email protected]). Times and The Economist. See https://www. The Rumble Fund also sponsors the annual penguinrights.co.uk/Penguin/277837.