Distinguished Professor Nikos Papastergiadis, from the University of Melbourne, will present the final lecture of the year of the successful Greek History and Culture Seminars series, offered by the Greek Community of Melbourne.

Professor Papastergiadis will present a lecture entitled “Learning Hospitality from Homer” on Thursday 28 September 2017, at the Greek Centre. A small celebration will follow.

Homer was born on the coastline that is today the hotspot for the route taken by refugees. Homer’s Odyssey is the epic poem of a homecoming. However, it is also a marvelous tale about the multiple worlds that Odysseus confronts, and an insight into the way a world is made through cunning, reason and art. Odysseus encounters a variety of forms of hospitality and his efforts to create and restore order, the cosmos of his homecoming, produces an unsettling vision of the meaning of hospitality.

Nikos Papastergiadis is a Professor at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He studied at the University of Melbourne and University of Cambridge. Prior to returning to the University of Melbourne he was a lecturer at the University of Manchester.

His sole authored publications include Modernity as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004) Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006), Cosmopolitanism and Culture (2012), Ambient Perspectives (2013) as well as being the editor of over 10 collections, author of numerous essays which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues such as the Biennales of Sydney, Liverpool, Istanbul, Gwanju, Taipei, Lyon, Thessaloniki and Documenta 13.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and co-chair of the Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture, and Chair of the International Advisory Board for the Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore.

When: Thursday 28 September 2017, 7.00pm
Where: Greek Centre (Mez, 168 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne)