Gennadius Lectures in 2007-2008

Invitation to the Walton Lecture by Cyril Mango

The 27th Annual Walton Lecture, titled “Imagining Constantinople” was delivered on May 6th, 2008 by Cyril Mango, Professor Emeritus of Oxford University; Cotsen Hall was packed. On the following day a symposium in honor of Professor Mango’s 80th birthday was organized by the Gennadius LIbrary with the help of Anne McCabe; it was titled “Byzantine Athens: Monuments, Excavations, Inscriptions.” The symposium featured seven speakers who focused on the archaeology of Byzantine Athens and included a memorable visit to the Parthenon with Professor Manolis Korres. I would like to thank the McCabe family for their encouragement and support for this event.

Thanks to the generosity of Lloyd Cotsen the Gennadius Library was able to host the following public lectures in 2007-2008:

  • Gonda Van Steen (University of Arizona) lectured on “Aristophanes in Twentieth - Century Athens” (November 3, 2007)
  • Oleg Grabar (Institute for Advanced Study) gave a speech on “The Object in and of Islamic Art” (March 11, 2008);
  • Anthony Cutler (Pennsylvania State University) spoke on “Legal Iconicity: The Documentary Image, Sacred Space and the Work of the Beholder” (March 18, 2008);
  • Timothy Gregory (Ohio State University) presented the lecture “Toward and Archaeological History of Byzantine Greece;” the event was co-sponsored with the Director of the ASCSA (April 8, 2008);
  • Vassilis Lambropoulos (University of Michigan) spoke on “Unbuilding the Acropolis in Greek Literature” on May 27, 2008.

Sinan Kuneralp, director of the Isis Press in Istanbul delivered a lively lecture on the archives of Yanko Aristarchi Bey, a Greek Ottoman Diplomat in the 19th century; his lecture stressed the importance of the Gennadius for the study of Ottoman history and will hopefully set in motion a scholarly exchange between Athens and Istanbul.

The second annual lecture co-sponsored with the Onassis foundation featured Professor Mark Janse (University of Ghent), an expert on Greek linguistics presented his findings on a Greek dialect still spoken in Cappadocia on May 13, 2008.