Nov 29 @ 7:30pm PST: Free Talk - Behind the Curtain of Myth: The Power of Greek Tragedy Under Communist Rule in Serbia

Please join us on Monday, November 29, for a free lecture via Zoom.

"Behind the Curtain of Myth: The Power of Greek Tragedy Under Community Rule in Serbia"

With Jelena Todorovic

UBC Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies

Zoom Link | Meeting ID: 639 0599 8130 | Password: 640528

A sound-only connection to the talk may be made by calling: 778-907-2071 (Vancouver)

This talk will explore how ancient Greek mythological tragedy provided a safe place for social and political criticism inside the communist apparatus of Serbia. We’ll discover the unique value that Serbian authors shared for Greek antiquity and intercultural exchange, and what we can learn from that continuing inspiration today.

A video recording  will be available for viewing for 30 days following the lecture.

The link will be circulated shortly after the presentation.

This 42nd  Season of Pharos is generously sponsored by Eleni Korkidakis-Fyssas in honour of her late husband, and good friend of Pharos,  Apostolos Fyssas

 

October 25, 2021 @ 7:30 pm PDT
Free lecture via Zoom

Prof. Hector Williams with Dr. Richard Spratley
The Orpheus Legend in Art and Music

Orpheus, the Greek hero whose songs could charm both gods and wild beasts and coax the trees and rocks into dance, has achieved an emblematic status as a metaphor for the power of music - and the power of love.  His legend has resonated through the millennia, giving rise to sculpture and vase paintings in the ancient Greek world, dozens of representations of him with animals in the Roman, and a few even in early Christian art as well as many works of Western art literature, dance, music, and film.  In Pharos’ opening presentation of its 42nd season, Hector Williams will look at Orpheus in Greek and Roman art and Ric Spratley will take you a quick tour of five centuries of Western Orphean music, dance, and more.

Join Zoom Meeting https://ubc.zoom.us/j/63905998130?pwd=UDdmaVpzN0Y0MzYyd0VVZWVxMzdLdz09 Meeting ID: 639 0599 8130 Passcode: 640528 A sound-only connection to the talk may be made by calling: 778-907-2071 (Vancouver) A video recording  will be available for viewing for 30 days following the lecture. The link will be circulated shortly after the presentation. This 42nd  Season of Pharos is generously sponsored by Eleni Korkidakis-Fyssas in honour of her late husband, and good friend of Pharos,  Apostolos Fyssas

Fall 2021

Pharos will be presenting two online lectures via Zoom. The link will be posted closer to the date of the first lecture. 

October 25, 2021 @ 7:30 PDT 

Prof. Hector Williams with Richard Spratley 

The Orpheus Legend in Art and Music

 

 November 29, 2021 @ 7:30 PST by Zoom 

Ms. Jelena Todorovic, UBC

Greek Myth/Tragedy in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Serbia 

April 2021

Monday 26 April, 2021 at 7:30 PDT, via Zoom
Mark Hamilton, Journalist & Musician

Musical Traditions of Crete

The music of Crete has a long, rich history that continues to develop and grow today. We’re going to explore the diversity of Cretan music, aided by music-lovers and musicians in Canada and on the island of Crete, and we'll try to answer a couple of questions: Is music really as important as it seems to Cretans? Why has it continued to to thrive when some other regional musics have been frozen as folkloric tradition?  

Mark Hamilton  is well known at Pharos as the man behind the guitar in several previous musical evenings.   He is a former journalist and university instructor of journalism and a (very) amateur musician, with a particular love for much of the music of Greece, especially Cretan music and early rebetiko. He has taken an online class in Cretan singing with Evgenia Toli-Damavoliti and is studying Cretan laouto with Giorgos Xylouris.  The photo shows Mark getting the vibe  in the Nikos Xylouris Museum in Anogeia, Crete.

This presentation is generously sponsored by the Cretan Association of BC

Join Zoom Meeting19:30 PST, 

Monday April 26,2021

https://ubc.zoom.us/j/63905998130?pwd=UDdmaVpzN0Y0MzYyd0VVZWVxMzdLdz09

Meeting ID: 639 0599 8130
Passcode: 640528

A sound-only connection to the talk may be made by calling:
1-778-907-2071 (Vancouver)

A video recording  will be available for viewing for 30 days following the lecture.
The link will be circulated shortly after the presentation.

This 41st Season of Pharos is generously sponsored by Nick and Maria Panos.

March 2021

March 29, 2021 @ 7:30 pm PDT
Free lecture via Zoom

Dr. Dimitri Krallis
Director of the SFU Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies and Associate Professor of Byzantine History at Simon Fraser University

Romioi one day, Greeks the next: Reading 1821 through a Byzantine Prism

We often forget that the people who rebelled against the Ottomans in 1821 saw themselves as Romioi (Romans). At that time few in Greece would have called themselves Hellenes. In fact, most of those Hellenes were Romioi who lived outside Greece proper.

So, what does this fact mean? To understand that we need to look to Byzantium and its legacy. In doing so, the revolt of 1821 acquires a new significance, because it emerges not simply as a struggle for the independence of a Greek nation, but rather as the rebirth and baptism of the Romioi as Greeks.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://ubc.zoom.us/j/63905998130?

pwd=UDdmaVpzN0Y0MzYyd0VVZWVxMzdLdz09
Meeting ID: 639 0599 8130Passcode: 640528

A sound-only connection to the talk may be made by calling:778-907-2071 (Vancouver)

This Lecture is Sponsored by the Hellenic Canadian Congress of B.C. in Memory of Professor André Gerolymatos, first Chair of Hellenic Studies at SFU.

The 41st Season of Pharos is generously sponsored by Nick and Maria Panos

February 2021

 Ancient Chorus, Modern Voices:
Antigone and Phaethon on Film

Dr. Hallie Marshall, Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies, 
UBC Department of Theatre and Film
with
Dr.  C.W. Marshall, Professor of Greek, UBC 
Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies.

In 2018, in collaboration with the film company Barefaced Greek, we made a short film of the “Ode to Man” from Sophocles’ Antigone with twelve UBC students. This talk will screen that film and discuss the process of undertaking this kind of practice-based research with students as part of a study abroad course to Greece. It will also discuss our next project, a film of the Dawn chorus from Euripides’ fragmentary tragedy Phaethon, to be filmed on the island of Naxos in May 2022. 

Monday February 22, 2021 at 7:30 PST

The lecture will be streamed live on Zoom: Non-Pharos members may register to receive the link by sending an email to:  PharosVancouver@gmail.com

A link to a video recording for later viewing will be circulated following the lecture. 

Next Pharos Lecture: Monday March 29, 2021 @ 19:30 PST: Speaker TBA

This 41st Season of Pharos is generously sponsored by Nick and Maria Panos

January 2021

 

Mothers, Prostitutes or Sex Goddesses?

Nude Female Imagery in Greek Sanctuaries

Dr. Megan Daniels

UBC Department of Classics, Near East and Religious Studies

Monday January 25, 2021 @ 7:30 PM PST via Zoom (Details below)

The iconography of the nude  female in the ancient world spans an area from Iraq to Spain over a period of more than 2000 years. It emerged within Mesopotamia in the third millennium BCE, and spread across western Asia in royal, domestic, and funerary contexts. In the Greek world, this imagery appeared between 800 and 600 BCE, a time known as the “Greek renaissance” following the Bronze Age collapse. Modern-day scholars highlighted this period as a time when the Greeks looked to the more venerable Near East for artistic inspiration, the so-called Orientalising period, and explained the nude female through the lens of Orientalism. Scholars working in the Near East and Egypt, on the other hand, explained this imagery through recourse to a generic “fertility/mother goddess” and through misogynistic attitudes towards female nudity. In this presentation I examine how the Orientalising and fertility paradigms have coloured our interpretation of this imagery. I offer a new interpretation that attempts to move beyond artistic influence and generic fertility deities and into the realm of the shared ideologies between Greece and western Asia represented by this imagery. In doing so, I blur distinctions between “west” and “east” and reconsider the shifting relationships between humans and their gods in the Iron Age.

This lecture is presented jointly by Pharos and The Archaeological Institute of America (Vancouver Society)

This 41st Season of Pharos is Generously Sponsored by  Nick and Maria Panos

This lecture will be streamed live on Zoom: Non-Pharos members may register to receive the link by sending an email to:  PharosVancouver@gmail.com

A link to a video recording for later viewing will be circulated following the lecture. 

Next Pharos Lecture: Monday February 22, 2021 @ 19:30 PST

Speaker TBA