Classics

Charles Gordon Mackay Lectures 2017

Professor Paschalis Kitromilides (Athens), Charles Gordon Mackay Lecturer in Greek 2017, will present a series of talks on 'Aspects of the later Greek intellectual tradition'. (Published 17 October, 2017)

 As Charles Gordon Mackay Lecturer in Greek 2017, Professor Paschalis Kitromilides will deliver a lecture and two seminars. All are free and open to all.

The Charles Gordon Mackay lectureship was established by a legacy from Mrs Millborough Mary Mackay in 1946. It provides for a lecturer to speak on themes relating to Ancient Greek literature, history, philosophy, and archaeology. According to the terms of the legacy, lecturers need not be of British nationality, and many have not been. In recent years the Mackay lecturers have included Professor David Konstan (2013-14) and Professor Leslie Kurke (2016-17) 

 

Date Title Venue Time
Monday 13 November

Charles Gordon Mackay Lecture - 'The heritage of humanism in the Greek intellectual tradition'

The lecture puts forward the argument that humanism cannot be seen as just an Italian intellectual phenomenon but it should be understood as a transcultural European expression of the transition from medieval to modern culture. It is suggested that this transcultural phenomenon had an important Southeast European dimension, especially connected with the ideas of civic humanism. Some representative examples of authors who wrote in Greek over a time span from the mid-15th to the early17th century are presented and discussed.

Teviot Lecture Theatre, Old Medical  School, Teviot Place 17.10
Wednesday 22 November Seminar I - 'The recovery of antiquity' Seminar room G13, William  Robertson Wing, Teviot Place 14.00
Wednesday 29 November 2017 Seminar II - 'The classics and revolution' Seminar room G15, William  Robertson Wing, Teviot Place 14.00

Paschalis M. Kitromilides, PhD Harvard University, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Athens and Director of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies. From 2000 to 2011 he was Director of the Institute of Neohellenic Research at the National Hellenic Research Foundation. He has held visiting appointments at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, the European University Institute and the Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence.

His books in English include 'The Enlightenment as Social Criticism. Iosipos Moisiodax and Greek Culture in the Eighteenth Century' (Princeton 1992); 'Enlightenment Nationalism Orthodoxy' (Variorum, 1994); 'An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe' (Ashgate,2007); 'Adamantios Korais and the European Enlightenment' (Voltaire Foundation, 2010); 'Enlightenment and Revolution. The Making of Modern Greece' (Harvard, 2013); 'Enlightenment and religion in the Orthodox world' (Voltaire Foundation, 2016).