Date:
Location:
“Transnational Visions of Judicious Integration: The Curious Fates of a Recessive Diplomatic Tradition"
Attend this event via Zoom (advance registration required)
Speaker:
George Kalpadakis, Fulbright Visiting Scholar, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES), Harvard University; Assistant Researcher, Modern Greek History Research Center (KEINE), Academy of Athens.
Contact:
Ilana Freedman
ifreedman@g.harvard.edu
This event is online only. Please click the "Read More" link for full instructions on how to attend this seminar.
Chairs:
Panagiotis Roilos, Faculty Associate. George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies, Department of the Classics; Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, Associate Professor, Department of Classics, Department of Anthropology, and the Humanities Center, The Johns Hopkins University.
Remote Access Information:
To join by computer:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwqdOCppz4tE9R0daQEqgOdotsBuCrt9T3F
Please note: This event requires registration in advance in order to receive the meeting link and password.
Abstract:
In the postwar period the issue of the post-colonial fate of Cyprus generated a debate on how to reconcile the complicated geostrategic balances in the Eastern Mediterranean with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of its people. In this context two divergent approaches emerged in Greece, which mirrored the cleavages formed by earlier diplomatic traditions. The first, which would come to dominate foreign policy in the latter part of the 1950s, harbored a more territorially-bounded notion of nationhood while the second, whose influence was receding, was characterized by a gradualist, more diachronic and transnationally-oriented approach aimed at what the Alexandrian Greek Constantine Cavafy termed “judicious integration.” While not antithetical to the pursuit of territorial consolidation, its proponents nevertheless envisioned a transitional phase whereby a multiplicity of national centers could wield soft power tools with the overriding goal of gradually asserting the hegemonic role of diasporic Hellenism in the region.
