NEWS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS
MODERN GREEK PROGRAM FALL 2016 - FALL 2017
INSIDE:
An Update on the Paideia Project Endowed Professorship
Andrew M. Hosler Travels to Greece on a Travel Award
The Modern Greek Program’s Radio Broadcasts
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
CONTENTS
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Our Fundraising Goal: A Message from Georgios Anagnostou
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Annual Radio Broadcast and Recognition Ceremony
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Andrew M. Hosler Travels To Greece
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Our Graduates
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Faculty Newsmakers
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Alumni News
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Modern Greek Program Academic Activities
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Our International Presence
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Building Bridges with our Community
We are grateful to artist Evangelia Philippidis for designing our Paideia Project image. The Program held an Appreciation Night in March 2016 to thank the community for its support and also to explain the purpose of our fundraising. But the highlight of the evening was our students and their testimonials. Insightful, reflective, and sharp, our students made us deeply proud. The program sponsored Panayiotis League, a scholar and musician who flew from Boston to share with us his distinguished repertoire of island music.
OUR FUNDRAISING GOAL A Message from Georgios Anagnostou Director of the Modern Greek Program The Ohio State University Dear Friends of the Ohio Greek-American Community, Fall 2017 marked the beginning of the third year of our Paideia Project, a fundraising campaign to raise $1 million and establish a Modern Greek Studies Professorship. This endowed professorship will ensure that Modern Greek language and culture will be taught, in perpetuity, at The Ohio State University. Today, the Modern Greek Program at Ohio State stands as one of the strongest and most respected in the nation. But budget cuts require us to take action. Many peer institutions have already established chairs and professorships to ensure the permanence of their Modern Greek programs: Columbia, Michigan and UC San Diego to name a few. We must do the same at Ohio State. The response of Ohio’s Greek Americans to our fundraising has been phenomenal. As of November 2017, the total committed donations (outstanding pledges and received cash) are approximating the $640,000 mark. We express our profound appreciation to all the individuals and organizations for their overwhelming support. Our fundraising committee, led by prominent local Greek-American leaders, is working tirelessly to achieve the goal of reaching the one million level. As we are entering the third year of the Paideia Project, we are asking you to contribute. Your donations make you a part of this most important educational initiative to ensure the teaching of modern Greek language and culture to The Ohio State University.
The Endowed Fund for the Teaching and Study of Modern Greek Language and Culture #482910 Contact: Liz Burns Senior Director of Development burns.217@osu.edu 614-292-2197 John Swartz Senior Director of Development Swartz.9@osu.edu 614-688-1834 Georgios Anagnostou Director, Modern Greek Program anagnostou.1@osu.edu
Read more about the Paideia Project: go.osu.edu/ paideiaproject
For additional information on the Paideia Project, and how to contribute, see online: go.osu.edu/paideiaproject
Sincerely,
Professor Georgios Anagnostou
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ANNUAL RADIO BROADCAST AND RECOGNITION CEREMONY Every spring, the Modern Greek Program offers a class in cooperation with The Ohio State Center for Languages, Literatures, and Cultures which allows advanced students to prepare and compose three radio broadcasts in Greek. These broadcasts stream live on the internet, attracting an audience in Greece and Ohio. In 2017, Athena Patitsas and Stavros Stefanopoulos created a series of broadcasts on the history of The Ohio State Modern Greek Program, and another on sports in Greece, while Yiannis Kellis and Anna-Maria Thalassinos broadcast on the Greek islands, Greek food in Columbus, summertime in Greece, and growing up in Greece and the USA. The final broadcast was open to the public, with food catered thanks to the Olympic Society, and was preceded by a brief recognition ceremony for our graduating seniors in Crane Café. We are grateful for the participation of many community members in these broadcasts, which in 2017 included interviews with Nick Alexander, Litsa Kozyris, Kosmas Synadinos, Bill and Anita Michailidis, Athanasios and Kalliroi Thalassinos, Elias Adamantidis, Elissaios Taiganides, the owners of Buckeye Donuts, Apollo’s Gyros, Eliá Athenian Grill and Taste of Greece.
ANDREW M. HOSLER TRAVELS TO GREECE In the summer of 2017, I had the amazing opportunity to study Modern Greek at THYESPA because of the generous scholarship from the Phaedon John Kozyris and Litsa Kozyris Travel Fund. For six weeks, I spent my mornings and early afternoons studying Modern Greek with students from all over the world. I made close friends with people from Bulgaria, Serbia, Spain, Russia, and even Egypt! I was placed in level B2, and almost the entirety of the class was in Greek. At first, the class was very challenging, but after about a week, I got accustomed to responding and even thinking partially in Greek.
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OUR GRADUATES Sitheris Fragoulis of Columbus graduated with a Modern Greek major. He is now a student in the graduate program of optometry at Ohio State. Sitheris is equally at ease in Greek and English, in Greece and the US, and studied at the University of Athens while at Ohio State. His Greek radio broadcasts won an audience in Greece and Ohio. Stavroula Pabst of Centerville, Ohio, graduated in May with majors in Modern Greek and History. In summer 2017 she served as an intern at the Greek Delegation to the United Nations, and in September began studies at McGill University in Montréal, where she has received a fellowship for M.A. studies in Modern Greek. Stavros Stefanopoulos from Dayton graduated with a minor in Modern Greek and won admission to the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences, where he is currently pursuing an M.D. Stavros made his mark already as a freshman with his participation in the Sawyer Seminar, and achieved increasing fluency in Greek over his years at Ohio State.
Initially, I began my study of Modern Greek in the fall of 2016 because I was going to study at College Year in Athens in the spring and wanted to be able to communicate. I study Classics with emphases in Latin and Ancient Greek, and I had no idea of the extent that Modern Greek would help with Ancient and vice versa. Although I know many words in Ancient Greek regarding justice and war, I didn’t know basic words like “onion” or “rabbit” because they occur less frequently.
of the words are either the same or very similar to their Modern Greek equivalents. Throughout my entire time in Greece, I met some of the nicest people and saw some of the most spectacular sights in the world. Most days, I would go to καφενεία and have a Greek coffee while speaking with the local customers about current events and their lives, or I would hop on the metro and relax at the beach with my friends. It was an amazing experience, and I can’t wait to go back.
My working knowledge of Modern Greek has allowed me to read Ancient Greek much more quickly because many
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FACULTY NEWSMAKERS Yiorgos Anagnostou was promoted to professor and gave an inaugural address at the Faculty Club, “European Americans: How they Matter,” on March 22, 2017.
up Greek,” and another on support of Greece during the Greek economic crisis. Christopher Brown continues running the Ohio State Humanities Institute Working Group on Dialectics, including study of Pre-Socratic philosophy. Gregory Jusdanis introduced a new freshman seminar, “Why We Travel,” and led a tour of his class to Montreal and Quebec City in December 2017.
He gave the Pallas Lecture at the University of Michigan on the connections between the study of Modern and Classics at the American University and he gave a keynote address on the Greek diaspora at a conference on immigration and diaspora organized by the Aristotelion University. He published two articles, one an analysis of the controversy surrounding the MTV reality show “Growing
ALUMNI NEWS The Modern Greek Program is proud to announce that our Modern Greek Program alumnus Eric Ball (Ph.D in Modern Greek Studies) received promotion to full Professor of Humanities and Arts at SUNY Empire State College this summer! Ball is the author of Sustained by Eating, Consumed by Eating Right (SUNY Press, 2013), a personal and cultural exploration of family and food. Artemis Leontis, professor of Modern Greek at the University of Michigan was appointed chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Michigan, a rare honor. Rev. Michael Manos graduated from Ohio State as a Modern Greek major in December, 2011. He spent time on Mount Athos in Greece and attended Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary in Brookline, MA. He was ordained to the priesthood on September 27th, 2015, and is now serving at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Troy, MI. He is married with two children and has achieved unusual fluency in Greek, both Ancient and Modern. Paris Gyparakis won a scholarship to the Law School of Hofstra University after graduation from Ohio State as a Modern Greek major in 2012. While at Hofstra he published an article entitled “The illegality of the Greek sovereign debt crisis: contract law’s response to the Greek government,” in the Journal of International Business and Law in the spring of 2017. He graduated from law school in May 2017 and is now working as an in-house attorney for GreenHills Ventures in New York City, a private equity firm that specializes in medical technology and cybersecurity. Paris writes, “I am indebted to the department for the value of my undergraduate education.” Thomas Papacostas graduated as a Modern Greek major in 2011 and from The Ohio State Law School in 2014. Since 2015, he has been working at Ohio State as public
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records program coordinator in the Office of University Compliance and Integrity; he will soon be assuming new duties as performance improvement manager at the Ohio Department of Medicaid. Nick Galouzis is now at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. He won admission to medical school as a Modern Greek major (2016).
MODERN GREEK PROGRAM ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES
Sponsored visiting speaker Maria Boletsi (Leiden University in The Netherlands) spoke on the Greek Crisis and wall writings in Athens on November 2, 2016. She also visited a number of our classes. Brian Joseph, one of the most distinguished linguists in the world and a leading scholar of the Greek language, gave the Annual Thomas E. Leontis and Anna P. Leontis Memorial Lecture in Modern Greek Studies with a talk, “Modern Greek Confronting its Past: Archaism and Innovation in Language,” on March 30, 2017. The Modern Greek Program co-sponsored the 6th Annual Midwest Workshop on the Greek Language on April 22, 2017. Speakers came for the universities of Chicago, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere. The event showed the unique breadth and depth of Greek language studies at Ohio State.
OUR INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE This summer Yiorgos Anagnostou spent two months on the Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program, working with an interdisciplinary team at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The aim of the project was to create archival resources‚ research material and identification of exhibits for a future Museum of Greek Diaspora and Immigration in Greece. Anagnostou gave two TV interviews on this project: One on ERT3 (in Greek) and another on Higher Education Today. He was also interviewed by the the Greek TV Program “Η Μηχανή του Χρόνου” (Time Machine), which recently produced three episodes about the experience of Greek immigrants in early twentieth century America. Gregory Jusdanis gave three lectures in Tbilisi Georgia in April 2017 on Greek literature, nationalism and friendship. In May, he co-organized with Maria Georgopoulou of the Gennadius Library in Athens the first conference in Greece to examine the links between Latin America and Greece, “One Hundred Years of Dialogue: Latin American Interpretations of Hellenism.” After Athens, he went to Alexandria, Egypt, where he gave a talk at the Biblioteca Alexandrina on the biography of the poet, C. P. Cavafy. In July, he gave a presentation in Ayvalik Turkey, “Can a Greek Author Think Like a Turk,” which explored the possibilities of intercultural dialogue. He then flew to Athens to participate in a workshop with graduate students on Cavafy’s work. Finally, in October he was invited to a conference in Hannover that explored the issues of colonialism and postcolonialism. Christopher Brown spoke at the Midwest Workshop on the Greek Language in April 2017 on the Modern Greek pedagogy of Nicholas Bachtin and George Thomson. He has co-authored a chapter on Greece in a forthcoming book on demodernization.
BUILDING BRIDGES WITH THE COMMUNITY On November 19, 2016, Christopher Brown organized and coordinated an event hosting students ages 8-16 from the Greek School of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral, their teachers and parents. This year the Greek school students prepared presentations for the Ohio State students in Greek! A very impressive showing. Ohio State students enrolled in Modern Greek language courses presented themselves and their work, and encouraged the younger students in their study of Greek. Highlights included videos about summer study in Greece by Anna-Maria Thalassinos, about attending high school in Greece by Yiannis Kellis, and on making kokoretsi by Stavros Stefanopoulos. Community Talk: on Sunday October 16, 2016 Yiorgos Anagnostou gave a talk at the Memorial Center of the Greek Orthodox Church in Dayton, Ohio. The topic was “Challenges and Cultural Prospects in Greek America.” Gregory Jusdanis gave a talk for the Dayton Greek Community in January 2017 on how Greeks and Latin Americans have interpreted classical antiquity. On November 17, 2016, the Modern Greek Program organized a presentation to the Columbus Greek community by Stavros T. Constantinou, entitled “Persistence and Change in Greek American Ethnicity: A Retrospective.”
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DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS 414 University Hall 230 N. Oval Mall Columbus OH, 43210 (614) 292-2744 classics.osu.edu
Learn more about our program online at go.osu.edu/modern-greek