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Forthcoming Events:

27-28 June 2013: International Conference "Emotion and Persuasion in Classical Antiquity" to be held in London. Speakers include Chris Carey (UCL) "Bashing the establishment: Corruption, degeneration and emotion"; Brenda Griffith-Williams (UCL) "Rational and emotional persuasion in Athenian inheritance cases"; Ed Sanders (RHUL) "Persuasion through emotions in Athenian deliberative oratory"; Maria Fragoulaki (Birkbeck) "Emotion, persuasion and kinship in Thucydides: The Plataian debate (3.52-68) and the Melian dialogue (5.85-113)"; Harry Lesser (Manchester) "Can a decent person be an orator? Plato and the teachers of rhetoric"; Lucy Jackson (Oxford) "The role of kinaesthetic empathy and the chorus in Plato’s Laws"; Daniel King (Exeter): "Emotion and the representation of animal suffering in Plutarch and Galen"; Jenny Winter (RHUL) "Instruction and example: Emotions in Xenophon’s Cavalry Commander and Anabasis"; Melina Tamiolaki (Crete) "Leadership and the art of persuasion: Emotional strategies in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia"; Jayne Knight (UBC) "Anger as a mechanism for social control in imperial Rome"; Eleanor Dickey (Exeter) "Emotional language and formulae of persuasion in papyrus letters"; Guy Westwood (Oxford) "Nostalgia, politics and persuasion in Demosthenes’ Letters"; Gabriel Evangelou (Edinburgh) "Words and deeds: The question of Cicero’s sincerity in his letters from exile"; Angelos Chaniotis (IAS) "Creating emotional community through texts"; Irene Salvo (Pisa) "Persuading mortals and immortals: Love in Greek curses"; Federica Iurescia (Siena) "Strategies of persuasion in provoked quarrels in Plautus: A pragmatic perspective"; Kate Hammond (Kingston) "‘It ain’t necessarily so’: Reinterpreting some poems of Catullus from a discursive psychological point of view 14:50 Matthew Johncock (RHUL): ‘He was moved, but... ’: Failed appeals to emotions in Ovid’s Metamorphoses"; Catherine Steel (Glasgow) "Emotional persuasion and rational emotion in late Republican oratory"; Alexandra Eckert (Halle-Wittenberg) "Emotions, persuasion and cultural trauma"; and Judith Hagen (Bayreuth) "Emotions in Roman historiography". For further information please contact the organisers, Ed Sanders and Matthew Johncock

18 October 2013: a Memorial Concert for Julian Chrysostomides. Details to be announced.

Recent Events:

14 June 2013: International Conference “Speaking in Tongues: Language, Communication and Power in the Middle Ages” held at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. Communication in the Middle Ages could take place within a wide spectrum of languages, dialects, and tongues. This conference, planned for the 14th of June 2013, will explore how the use and manipulation of language can contribute to our understanding of ‘real-world’ medieval cultural interaction, and investigate how complex ideas and societal mores were communicated and translated between languages. How did people overcome the governmental and administrative challenges in multilingual environments, such as diplomatic missions to the Mongols, knightly organisations, courts, and trading entrepôts? How were concepts and theories transmitted through cultures, across borders, or within the peripheries of Christendom, even within large institutions such as the Church or multi-ethnic polities, such as the Holy Roman or Byzantine empires? What kind of problems presented themselves in the realms of East-West relations, synods, and church councils, where complex doctrine and beliefs were discussed, debated and translated? This interdisciplinary conference, bringing together the linguistic, cultural, and historical, was held at the IHR in central London. It comprised four broad thematic strands, interspersed with refreshments, a catered lunch, and a keynote lecture, delivered by Dr Alan V. Murray (Leeds). 1. “Cultural and political interaction in central and eastern Europe”: the imposition of German settlement and law in Slavic lands, how legal problems and grievances were resolved in multi-lingual communities and the difficulties which French and German European noble houses, such as the Angevins or the Luxemburgs, had in ruling their polyglot Eastern domains. 2. “Ecclesiastical administration and theory”: the practicalities of synods and councils, managing conflict within ecclesiastical communities, translation of documents involved in papal government, and the problems the papacy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy faced in transmitting its ideas and organisation on a ‘global’ scale. 3. “Byzantium and the gateway to Europe”: the transfer of scientific principles into and out of Christian Europe; the Byzantine state’s government of a wide array of different ethnic, and hence linguistic, groups, and the role of language in trading networks in the Aegean and beyond. 4. “The Latin East, crusader states, and knightly orders”: the role of language in the administration and diplomacy of multi-lingual and multi-cultural states in the Holy Land, whether Christian or Muslim; the challenges knightly orders faced when dealing with a ‘worldwide’ membership; and how ideas on religious warfare permeated across cultures. The Conference was sponsored by RHUL, the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, the Hellenic Institute, the Society for the Promotion of Byantine Studies and the German History Society. For further information please contact the co-organisers, Simon Parsons and Mark Whelan.

5 June 2013: Paper on “Wailing, Lamentations and Tears: Byzantium and the Turks in the Fifteenth Century” by Christopher Hobbs, at the History Department Postgraduate Seminar, RHUL premises at 11 Bedford Square, Room G3, London.

25-26 April 2013: International Colloquium “From Antiphon to Autocue: Speechwriting Ancient and Modern” held at The Hellenic Centre, 16-18 Paddington Street, London W1U 5AS. The first day comprised papers on Greek Speechwriting under two Panels: (1) “Speechwriting and the Athenian Law Courts” to be presented by Professor Michael Gagarin (Texas), “Logography and the Development of Athenian Forensic Argument”, Professor Chris Carey (UCL), “Ethics in the Second Oldest Profession: Thoughts on Lysias’ logography”, Professor Mike Edwards (Trinity St David, Lampeter), “Logographer and client in the speeches of Isaeus” and Dr Eleni Volonaki (Peloponnese), “Lykourgos”; and Panel (2) with papers on “Speechwriting for the Assembly?” by Professor Niall Livingstone (Birmingham), “Alcidamas on Improvisation: Theorising Political Authority in a Democracy”, Dr Christos Kremmydas (RHUL), “Political Speechwriting in Classical Athens?”, Professor Lene Rubinstein (RHUL), “Stage-managing symbouleutic speeches”, and Dr Alessandro Vatri (Oxford), “Speeches for hearers, speeches for readers: Attic oratory and the linguistics of performance”. The second day was devoted to Roman Speechwriting with papers by Professor Catherine Steel (Glasgow), “Orators, speechwriters and other editorial aids in the late Republic”, Dr Gesine Manuwald (UCL), “Cicero as a writer of speeches”, and Dr Jacqueline Klooster (Ghent), “The Speeches of the Roman emperors in Suetonius’ Lives of the twelve Caesars”, followed by Byzantine Speechwriting with papers by Dr Ida Toth (Oxford), title to be announced, Dr Tassos Tyflopoulos (KCL), “Take My Word for It: Speechwriting, Authenticity and the Emperor Constantine I”, and finally Modern Speechwriting with papers by Richard Toye, “Churchill and his Speechwriters”, Tom Clarke, “The speech, the speaker, his script, and its writer: Paul Keating, Don Watson, and the ‘Redfern Park Speech’”, Professor Andrew Tolson (De Montfort), “Audience Address in the 2010 Election”, and Simon Lancaster, title to be announced. The event was organised by RHUL Centre for Oratory and Rhetoric.

7 April 2013: Concert dedicated to ‘Arcadia’ performed by the Symphonic Orchestra Arcadia Mundi, under the auspices of the International Society for Arcadia (ISA), in St John, Smith’s Square, London. The repertoire included Beethoven, Prometheus Overture, Britten, The Young Apollo, Bernstein, Serenade after Plato’s Symposium, Debussy, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Syrinx, Mouquet, Pan et les Oiseaux, Nielsen, Pan and Syrinx, Sibelius, Pan and Echo, Nikos Skalkottas, Arkadikos, Mikis Theodorakis, Greek Dances and Manos Hadjidakis, Marsyas (first performance). Conducted by Anastasios Strikos with Angelos Antonopoulos acting as narrator.

26 March 2013: at the invitation of the Librarian and Archivist of Lambeth Palace Library (LPL), Dr Giles Mandelbrote, RHUL MA students visited the Library to examine original Greek manuscripts. Mrs Clare Brown, LPL Archivist, introduced the students to the history of LPL and its collections. Dr Christopher Wright presented the Greek Manuscript collection and sub-collections, and Dr Charalambos Dendrinos guided the students in examining representative manuscripts. This visit is part of a close collaboration between the Hellenic Institute and LPL over the cataloguing and study of the Greek Manuscript Collection.

21 March 2012: the College received H. E. The Ambassador of Greece to the United Kingdom Mr Konstantinos Bikas, who gave a lecture on “Geography development and cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean” at the Main Lecture Theatre. In his lecture Mr Bikas expounded on the indisputable geopolitical importance of the area as a crossroad of peoples and civilisations through the centuries, and presented his views on current developments within the complex socio-economic, political, religious and cultural issues in the wider context of the international state of affairs dominated by the financial crisis. The lecture was followed by a discussion. Co-organised under the auspices of the RHUL Diplomatic Society and Geopolitics and Security Society, with the collaboration of Professor David Gilbert, Dr Peter Adey and Mr Petros Kapsaskis. The lecture was attended by Dr Evdokia Fournatzopoulou, Expert Counsellor at the Embassy of Greece, students and staff from the Departments of Geography, Economics, Politics & International Relations, History and Classics.

14 March 2013: the Twelfth Annual Hellenic Lecture on “Xeniteia: the Greek diaspora in modern times” was delivered by Professor Richard Clogg, Emeritus Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford and Visiting Pro-fessor in Modern Greek History at RHUL Hellenic Institute. In his lecture Professor Clogg explored the evolution of the diaspora and its relation with the Greek State and ἡ καθ’ ἡμᾶς Ἀνατολή, the Greek East. The Greeks are an archetypal diaspora people. Xeniteia, sojourning in foreign lands, has been central to the experience of the Greek people from time immemorial to the modern world. From the eighteenth century onwards emigration from the Greek lands has accelerated, reaching significant peaks between the mid-1890s and the outbreak of the First World War, and in the late 1950s and 1960s. This has led to a significant Greek presence in the United States, Australia, Canada, Western Europe and elsewhere. Towards the end of the twentieth century Greece, with growing prosperity, became a country of immigration rather than emigration. Moreover, the present economic crisis has resulted in some Greeks once again taking the path of xeniteia. In his closing remarks Professor Clogg drew attention to the fact the material recording various aspects of the diaspora of the Greek people all over the world is immense and largely unexplored, and therefore systematic research on this im-portant area for the history of Hellenism remains an urgent desideratum. In his Vote of Thanks, Professor Francis Robinson, highlighted the contribution of the Greek diaspora in this country. The lecture, hosted by Professor Paul Hogg, Vice-Principal for Research and Enterpise, and Chairman of the Hellenic Institute’s Steering Group, was held in the Windsor Building Auditorium, followed by a reception in the Foyer and Dinner in honour of the Speaker in the Picture Gallery. The event, organised jointly by the Hellenic Institute and the College Events Manager Mrs Marta Baker and Mrs Sue Heath, was attended by over eighty students, members of staff, and friends and supporters.

6 March 2013: the RHUL Classical Society organised the “Classics Day” with various events taking place around the College Egham Campus between 11am-9pm. These included “Tales From Ovid” preview perfor-mance, talks on “Fun with Ovid in the Metamorphoses” by Dr Llewelyn Morgan (Oxford), “Homeric Epic and Rap Culture” by Professor Ahuvia Kahane (RHUL), “Plato on Poetry” by Professor Anne Sheppard (RHUL), “Greek for the Innocents” by Professor Jonathan Powell (RHUL), “Latin and Greek Poetry Recital” by David Raeburn (Oxford), “Judgement of Paris” by the Film Festival Society, as well as “Absolute Harmony performance, Charity Gladiator Battles by the Philosophy Society, informal debates” by the Debating Society, University Challenge, Comedy Society Stand-up and last but not least Karaoke!

25 February 2013: the 2013 Annual Dabis Lecture, entitled “Visual Ontologies: Style, Archaism and the Construction of the Sacred in the Western Tradition”, was given by Dr Jas Elsner, Humfrey Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art at the University of Oxford, and Professor of the History of Art at the University of Chicago. In his lecture, at RHUL Picture Gallery, Dr Elsner showed ways in which sacred images have been framed by other images, often in different styles, within the Western tradition in order to establish their aura. The lecture moved from ancient Greece and Rome via the middle ages in Byzantium and the West to the Counter Reformation.

16 February 2013: one-day Colloquium entitled “Greece/Precarious/ Europe: Culture and Crisis”, held at The Hellenic Centre in London, brought together academics, artists and writers, who discussed how contem-porary Greek culture is transformed in the current economic and socio-political crisis, questioning established orthodoxies and hierarchies, looking for new ways of creating a Greek national/transnational imaginary and reassessing the relationship between the present and ‘the archive’, which determines the historical and cultural inheritance of Greece. Panel 1: Crisis and the Past, dicsussed by Dr Dimitris Plantzos (Athens), Dr Dimitris Papanikolaou (Oxford), and Professor Richard Alston (RHUL). Panel 2: Representations (1) chaired by Professor Roderick Beaton (King’s College London); Dr Theodoros Chiotis (Oxford) discussed Crisis and poetry, Dr Eleftheria Ioannidou (Birmingham) discussed Crisis and theatre, Dr Maria Margaronis (London correspondent for the Nation and freelance correspondent for the Guardian) discussed Crisis and Media. Panel 3: Representations (2), Dr Angela Dimitrikaki (Edinburgh), Dr Sozita Goudouna (Curator and Artistic Director of Out of the Box Intermedia) and Dr Georgios Papadopoulos (Erasmus University Rotterdam) discussed Visual Art and Crisis. The final session, by Dr Kostas Douzinas (Birkbeck College, University of London), was fol-lowed by a Round Table discussion chaired by Dr Efi Spentzou (RHUL). The event was organised jointly by The Hellenic Centre, the Subfaculty of Modern Greek, Oxford University, and RHUL Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome with the support of RHUL Humanities and Arts Research Centre. The Conference, convened by Dr Dimitris Papanikolaou, Dr Efi Spentzou and Professor Richard Alston, was attended by over a hundred delegates.

1 February-22 March 2013: the University of London Postgraduate Working Seminar on Editing Byzantine Texts was re-convened by Dr Christopher Wright and Dr Charalambos Dendrinos, to continue preparing an annotated edition and translation of the Letters of George of Cyprus at The Warburg Institute, University of London.

24 January 2013: Inaugural Lecture on “Philosophy, Politics and Education: the significance of Plato’s Gorgias” by Professor Anne Sheppard, held in the Windsor Building Auditorium. In her lecture Professor Sheppard explained that she had first been interested in Plato’s Gorgias as a work of literature and a discussion of rhetoric. Over time, however, she had increasingly come to appreciate the political implications of this dialogue. She focused on the way in which philosophy and politics are contrasted in the Gorgias as well as Socrates’ harsh criticisms of the politics and politicians of classical Athens. She went on to consider the commentary on the Gorgias by Olympiodorus, an Alexandrian Neoplatonist writing in the sixth century AD. Olympiodorus defended Plato against the criticisms of the second-century sophist Aelius Aristides, accepting Plato’s criticisms of democracy and the political theory of the Republic in a way which reflects his historical circumstances. In the closing section of her lecture Professor Sheppard stressed the importance of studying philosophy, as valuable now as in the fourth century BC or the sixth century AD.

Past Events: