Eventlist

Lecturer: Vrasidas Karalis
Entry: Free

NOTE: THIS WEEK ONLY, THE SEMINAR WILL TAKE PLACE ON LEVEL 1 (not the Mezz)

Synopsis

University of Sydney professor Vrasidas Karalis will present a lecture entitled “Kostas Papaioannou and the Enigmas of Greek Art”, on Thursday, May 7 from 7 p.m., in the Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture of the Greek Community of Melbourne. The lecture is part of the Greek History and Culture Seminars and is free and open to the public.

Kostas Papaioannou (1925-1981) was one of the most innovative critical theorists of culture, politics and art of the previous century. One of the intellectuals who left Greece in 1945 and established himself as a philosopher and translator in France, Papaioannou was amongst the first who submitted Marxism and the Left ideology to a systematic critique in an attempt to establish a new conceptual framework on socialism and social change.

A close friend of Raymond Aron, Boris Souvarine, Octavio Paz, Yves Bonnefoy and Pierre Nora, he proposed a new model for the creation of liberal democracy based on open society and critical dialogue.

In this talk, professor Karalis will give a brief presentation of Papaioannou’s works on ideology and he will emphasize on his work on Byzantine and Ancient Greek art, where he is expressing a tragic sense of life that can be employed today to synthesize Western metaphysics and Judeo-Christian messianism.

Bio

Vrasidas Karalis is Professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Sydney. For the last 20 years, his area of research has been in Modern Greek, Byzantine, Cultural Studies and more recently New Testament Studies. He also translated the Australian Nobel Laureate Patrick White’s three major novels into Greek (Voss, The Vivisector, A Cheery Soul).

Furthermore, Karalis’ Australian involvement can be seen in the number of public lectures he has been invited to offer in Greek-Australian and mainstream Australian venues.

He received the Federation Medal from the Federal Government in 2003. His recent publications include: Demons of Athens (Brandl & Schlesinger), Recollections of Mr Manoly Lascaris (Brandl & Schlesinger), Power, Judgement and Political Evil: In Conversation with Hannah Arendt (Ashgate), and A History of Greek Cinema (Continuum).

Sponsors

Our sincere thanks to: Jim Bossinakis and Panagis Zapantis (in memory of) for sponsoring this seminar.

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