Logos Colloquium Archive – 2021-22
“Rediscovering Greek Medicine. Wisdom from Hidden Manuscripts and Texts”
Alain Touwaide, Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions
October 29, 2021
Rediscovering Greek Medicine. Wisdom from Hidden Manuscripts and Texts
Greek Medicine is traditionally considered as the source of modern medicine and, more recently, also of the Mediterranean diet. Though essentially correct, this idea hides more than it tells about Greek Medicine. A search of ancient manuscripts in libraries worldwide has revealed a whole wealth of texts that had been overlooked thus far, whereas they offer a much more complex vision of ancient Greek Medicine characterized by fundamental wisdom in the management of daily life, health, and disease.
Alain Touwaide earned a PhD in Classics at the University of Louvain (Belgium, 1981) and a Habilitation à diriger des recherches in Ancient and Medieval History at the University of Toulouse (France, 1997). He researches the history of ancient science, particularly botany, medicinal plants, medicine and therapeutics in the Mediterranean World from archaic Greece to the Ottoman Empire. With such interests he has been in residence in medical schools, colleges of pharmacy, and faculties of sciences across the globe in a scientific Grand Tour that included the Botany Department of the Smithsonian Institution over the past 15 years. At the same time, he has been searching for Greek manuscripts and texts on these topics in libraries all over the world, and has been doing research and teaching in departments of Classics and History, centers for Byzantine studies, and faculties of Humanities worldwide. To better foster the development of original research in this vast and complex field of research he has co-founded the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions in 2007. The most recent of his multiple publications is A Census of Greek Medical Manuscripts (London and New York: Routledge, 2016) published in the series Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean that he has created.
“Does Philosophy prepare you for Death?”
Agnes Callard, University of Chicago
November 5, 2021
Agnes Callard is an Associate Professor in Philosophy. She received her BA from the University of Chicago in 1997 and her PhD from Berkeley in 2008. Her primary areas of specialization are Ancient Philosophy and Ethics.
Νέες εξελίξεις στη διδασκαλία της ελληνικής ως γλώσσας πολιτισμικής κληρονομιάς
Lydia Mitits, Democritus University of Thrace
November 20, 2021
The principles and application of TBL (Task-Based Learning) and CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) in teaching Heritage Greek
The seminar introduces principles and practices of Heritage Language (HL) teaching and how thε TBL and CLIL can be used in the HL classroom. I will outline the steps of the design and implementation of the two approaches and provide some tools and strategies for their use.
Heavenly and Terrestrial Manifestations of Aphrodite: From Pre-Socratic Philosophy to Victorian Poetry
Achilleas Stamatiades
January 22, 2022
Upon graduation from Athens College in Athens, Greece, Achilleas Stamatiadis enrolled at Northeastern University in Boston, where he completed his B.A. with a major in International Affairs and minors in History, Political Science and Classics. He then took courses in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception over two semesters at the Harvard Extension School and the university’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Achilleas Stamatiadis then completed the M.A. Degree Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where his thesis was entitled ‘Heavenly and Terrestial Manifestations of an Ancient Goddess from Empedocles’ ‘Aphrodite’ to Tennyson’s ‘Lucretius’. His Master’s thesis examines, inter alia, how a Platonic model of thought became a Renaissance exemplum for scholars such as Ficino, who used it in their leadership curricula as well as in their correspondence with prominent humanists and leaders of that time. Achilleas Stamatiadis has given lectures at the Athens Center, the Hellenic American Educational Foundation and the Centre Culturel Hellenique in Paris. He currently pursues further research in the fields of Classics and Comparative Literature so as to prepare for a Doctorate degree.
“The Antikythera Computer of Genius”
Evaggelos Vallianatos
February 26, 2022
The Greek Language: Present, Past, and Teaching Challenges
Conference, co-organized by the Center of Hellenic Studies, the Greek Consulate in Chicago and the Democritus University of Thrace
Epidemics and vulnerable communities: Three Case Studies
Dr. John Schneider, University of Chicago
Dr. John Schneider MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, is a network epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist in the Departments of Medicine and Public Health Sciences at the University of Chicago. He is also Director of the University of Chicago Center for HIV Elimination (http://hivelimination.uchicago.edu/). His NIH and CDC funded research focuses on social network interventions that can lead to disease elimination in most vulnerable populations in resource restricted settings. In these settings he also implements network interventions and computational modeling to eliminate new transmission events in the case of HIV. Clinically, he specializes in HIV prevention and has a specific interest in the provision of high-quality care to young Black men who have sex with men and transgender women. He has extensive experience with advancing the physician patient relationship in resource restricted settings, including his current clinic at a Federally Qualified Health Center on the South Side of Chicago – Howard Brown Health 55th – and during his previous time working in Southern India.
Jews of Greece: 25 centuries of continuous presence
Dr. Mimis Cohen, University of Illinois at Chicago
Abstract: The presence of Jews in Greece can be traced back to the 4th century BCE. Thus, this community is considered to be the oldest Jewish community on European soil. The most important milestones of this long history will be highlighted in this presentation covering, historical, religious, political, and cultural events from antiquity to the present day. The migration of Jews from the Ibiric peninsula and other parts of western and eastern Europe and the establishment of prosperous communities, most remaining very active till the Holocaust will be discussed. Relations, collaborations, and frictions between Jews and their Christian compatriots will be presented as well. Specific emphasis will be given to the little-known history of Romaniote Jews, a historical ancient community of Greek-speaking Jews with distinctive linguistic, liturgical, and cultural customs. The most important sites of Jewish settlements will be showcased based on archeological, historical, and bibliographic findings.
Dr. Mimis Cohen is a Professor and the chief of the Division of Plastic, Reconstructive, and Cosmetic Surgery at UI Health, where he also serves as the director of the Craniofacial Center. Dr. Cohen is world-renowned for his work in the field of cleft lip and palate surgery. He has published extensively on the topic and lectured throughout the world. Dr. Cohen received his medical degree from the University of Athens, Greece before coming to UI Health for special training in General and Plastic Surgery. He is board certified in Plastic Surgery. As a University Professor with extensive clinical and teaching experience, Dr. Cohen is in the forefront of the specialty. He brings to his patients the knowledge and experience of the state of the art procedures, as well as the emerging new techniques in reconstructive and cosmetic surgery. Dr. Cohen is a member and former president of several professional organizations. He has published more than 160 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has edited several textbooks. He has been recognized as one of the best doctors in Chicago for the last 25 years.
“Turkey and the West in the Aftermath of the Cold War”
Professor Constantine Arvanitopoulos at the Fletcher School, Tufts University.
Abstract: Over the last two decades, relations between Turkey and the West have deteriorated. Turkey has gradually distanced itself from the West, almost abandoning its foreign policy objective of becoming a member of the EU.
Relations with the US have also worsened over the last years. The rift between Turkey and the US is deeper and more serious than the occasional quarrels of the past, such as the “Johnson letter” incident in 1964, or the crisis over the “northern front” issue in the US war against Iraq in 2003.
The current rift is linked to Turkey’s perception that the post 1945 international order is disintegrating. In the new geopolitical landscape, Turkey does not feel obligated to remain dependent upon, or integrated in the West. It has developed its own regional hegemonic and, in some respects, revisionist aspirations, that often diverge from Western interests.
Its tolerance of Islamic extremism, its tense relations with Israel, Egypt and Greece, its deepening of relations with Russia, have posed serious challenges to US and European policy makers.
In the war in Ukraine, Turkey tries to walk a tightrope between its formal alliances and its post-western policies by trying to assume the role of an “honest broker” in the conflict.
The war and the emerging new cold war, however, will present Turkey with difficult dilemmas and critical choices.
Professor of International Relations, Panteion University, Athens; former Minister of Education; President of the European Council (level of Ministers of Education during Greece’s Presidency of the EU, 1/1/2014-31/6/2014); Chair of the Department of International and European Studies, Panteion University (2006-2010); Member of the High Council of the European University Institute, Florence (2004-2009); Senior Research Associate, The Martens Center for European Studies; Post-doctoral fellow, at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University (1990-1992); Assistant Professor at the department of Public and International Affairs, George Mason University (1992-19950; written books on Transitions from Authoritarianism to Democracy, on Transatlantic Relations, on US Foreign Policy, on European Liberalism.
On the Beginnings of Modern Greek Cultural History: Boundaries, Ideological Constructs and Methodological Suggestions
Professor Panagiotis Roilos, George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and of Comparative Literature at Harvard University
Abstract: My lecture will focus on the intricate issue of the beginnings of modern Greek literature and culture from a methodological perspective which builds upon the concepts of Ursprung (“origin”) and schismogenesis put forward in different discursive contexts by Walter Benjamin and Gregory Bateson, respectively, while critically engaging with recent problematics concerning the ideology and practice of literary history. Drawing from diverse sources written in both archaizing registers and in the so-called vernacular, and revisiting the use of different (linguistic, geographical, historical, administrative) criteria of periodization in previous scholarship, I shall contend that the late fifteenth and especially the sixteenth century marked an important turning point in the formation of a distinct proto-national and cultural imaginary among Greek authors and readers. That imaginary, it will be argued, was supported by a more or less systematic “cultural political movement,” which promulgated the importance both of discourses about cultural and historical continuity between contemporary and ancient Greeks, and of the literary use of the vernacular, for the educational and national priorities of the Greeks. That movement, it will be further proposed, should be compared with the Greek Enlightenment of the late eighteenth-early nineteenth century, and especially with the cultural and pedagogical program of Adamantios Korais.
Panagiotis Roilos was born and raised in Greece. He studied at the University of Athens (B.A./Ptychion in Classics, Byzantine, and Modern Greek Literature, 1991) and Harvard University (Ph.D., 1999). He has been a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (spring 2009) and has been awarded a Forschungsstipendium für erfahrene Wissenschaftler from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2010). Professor Roilos has been awarded an Honorary PhD from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens. He is a member of the Administrative Council of the European Cultural Center of Delphi and serves on the Advisory Board of the research and policy institute Dianeosis. He is the founder and director of the Delphi Academy of European Studies.
