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The Craft of Biography: Writing Greek Lives

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The Craft of Biography: Writing Greek Lives ELEFTHEROS VENIZELOS CHAIR OF MODERN GREEK STUDIES A ONE DAY CONFERENCE THE CRAFT OF BIOGRAPHY: WRITING GREEK LIVES Thursday, March 11, 2010 MORNING PROGRAM AFTERNOON PROGRAM Chair: Michael Llewellyn-Smith Chair: Haris Vlavianos 09:00 Gather and register: welcomes 14:45 Michalis Chryssanthopoulos: “Fact and fiction in Greek 09:15 Chairman’s Introduction Life Writing” 09:45 Christopher Pelling: 15:30 Georgia Farinou-Malamatari: “Plutarch and Ancient Greek “Biography and the Novel Biography” in 20th Century Greek Literature” 10:30 William St Clair: “Life Writing: Genres 16:15 Dionysis Kapsalis: and Sources” “The Quest for Authenticity: the Autobiographical Moment 11:15 Coffee Break in Modern Greek Literature” 11:45 Michael Llewellyn-Smith: 17:00 Round Table: “Venizelos, a case study” questions, discussion and conclusions 12:30 Roderick Beaton: “Between Literature and History: Writing the Biography of George Seferis” 13:15 Discussion 13:30 - 14:30 Lunch Break Roderick Beaton is Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine (Jan. 2007) 20-65) and several articles on Greek History, Language and Literature at King’s College biographical fictions. She is currently preparing London, which he joined in 1981. He has published a book on Modern and Postmodern biographical widely on Greek literature and culture from the later fiction in 20th-century Greek Literature. Byzantine period to the present. His books include The Medieval Greek Romance (1989, 2nd ed. 1996); Dionysis Kapsalis An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature (1994, is Director of the Cultural Foundation of the National 2nd ed. 1999), the novel Ariadne’s Children, and Bank of Greece (MIET). He studied Classics and the literary biography: George Seferis, Waiting for English Literature at Georgetown University, the Angel (Yale University Press, 2003). His most Washington D.C. (1970-1974) and did postgraduate recent books are Kazantzakis as Modernist and work in Modern Greek Literature in the Department Postmodernist (in Greek) (Kastaniotis, Athens, 2009) of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King’s and The Making of Modern Greece: Romanticism, College, London (1981-1984). He has held various Nationalism and the Uses of the Past, 1797-1896 jobs as an editor. His published work includes (co-edited with David Ricks) (Ashgate 2009). From poetry, essays and articles, and various translations October 2009 to September 2012 he has been awarded of poetry and drama. a Major Leverhulme Fellowship to work on his current project, a monograph provisionally entitled Byron’s Michael Llewellyn-Smith’s War: The Greek Revolution and the English Romantic Oxford University doctoral dissertation was Imagination. published as Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919-1922 (C Hurst & Co 1998). From 1970 to 1999 he Michalis Chryssanthopoulos served in the British Diplomatic Service, in London, is Professor of General and Comparative Literature, Moscow, Paris, Warsaw and Athens, his last two School of Philology, Aristotle University of posts being Ambassador to Poland and Ambassador Thessaloniki. He is working on nineteenth-century to Greece (1996-99). He has written books about Greek prose, surrealism, the role of literature in Crete (The Great Island: a Study of Crete), the the construction of the nation, dream discourse in 1896 Olympic Games (Olympics in Athens 1896: literature, and psyhchoanalytical literary theory. He the Invention of the Modern Olympic Games), and has published (all in Greek, titles here translated): Athens (Athens: a Cultural and Literary History, Greek surrealism and the construction of tradition: Signal Books 2004), and is currently working on Embeirikos, Calas, Engonopoulos (Athens, Agra, the life and times of Eleftherios Venizelos. He is an forthcoming), Artemidorus and Freud: theories of Hon Fellow of St Antony’s College Oxford and Vice interpretation and literary dreams (Athens, Exandas, President of the British School at Athens, and is the 2005), Georgios Vizyenos: between memory and current holder of the Eleftherios Venizelos Chair in imagination (Athens, Estia, 1994). Modern Greek Studies at the American College of Greece (Deree). Georgia Farinou-Malamatari is Professor of Modern Greek Literature at Christopher Pelling the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her is Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University. He recent publications include two edited volumes is currently President of the International Plutarch with introductions (Introduction to Alexander Society, and his books include Plutarch and History Papadiamandis’ Prose, Herakleion, Crete University (2002), Literary Texts and the Greek Historian Press 2005, and Psycharis and his Times, Thessaloniki, (2000), and a commentary on Plutarch’s Life of INE 2005). She has also published a translation of Antony (1988). A Penguin translation (Plutarch: Bakhtin’s “Towards a reworking of the Dostoevsky Rome in Crisis) is in the press, and a commentary on book” with an extended afterword (Nea Estia, 1796 Plutarch’s Life of Caesar is expected soon. William St Clair is Senior Research Fellow, Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and of the British Academy. His books include Lord Elgin and the Marbles (3rd revd edn, 1998), That Greece Might Still Be Free (1972, new edn, Open Book 2009), Trelawny, the Incurable Romancer (1978), The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family (1989), The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004), and The Grand Slave Emporium, Cape Coast Castle and the British Slave Trade (2006). He is coeditor with Peter France of Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography (OUP, 2002) commissioned to mark the centenary of the British Academy. Haris Vlavianos studied at Bristol and Oxford and is Professor of History and Politics at the American College of Greece (Deree). In addition to Greece 1941-1949: From Resistance to Civil War (London, 1992), he has published eight collections of poetry - the most recent being Vacation in Reality (2009) - and two books of essays, and has translated into Greek the works of such well-known poets as Whitman, Pound, Blake, Ashbery, cummings, Stevens, Longley and Pessoa. His own work has been translated into numerous languages..
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