2023-24

The course examines the concept of diaspora and its significance for the understanding of basic questions in modern and contemporary Greek political, social and economic history. The course deals with such matters as the foundation, organization and development of Greek communities abroad, with the aim of offering a composite view of the phenomenon of the Greek diaspora in broader terms.

The course deals with the main artistic trends and tendencies in painting in Orthodox lands of eastern Europe and the Middle East. At the same time, it places particular emphasis on the historical and ideological context in which the painters worked, so as to offer an iconographic interpretation of the painting produced during the Ottoman occupation.

The course commences with the process whereby the Greek state was constituted during the struggle for Greek independence. It then examines the major developments and changes undergone by the Greek state. It offers an analysis of social, economic and political structures and looks at various aspects of Greek political history.

The roots of modern Greek art, that is, the art that developed in the free Greek state over the 19th and 20th centuries, are to be found in Byzantine painting and the Ionian school of the period before the outbreak of the Greek revolution. After the liberation of Greece, as the result of various composite and mutual influences from Europe, the artistic personality of modern Hellenism was shaped. Many of the works of art of the period express and reproduce the ideological trends, the nature and the transformations in modern Greek society.

The subject of the course is the study of religious folklore and, in particular, of the forms of popular religiousness and the traditional religious behavior of the Greeks. The course also examines forms of custom and ritual over time and in their contemporary manifestations. It places particular stress upon customs associated with the life cycle, the yearly festival calendar and on new forms of custom and ritual that define the life of contemporary man.