October + November 2011

24 October 2011 at 7:30 pm

Lemnos: The Story of a Greek Island
Professor Hector Williams
UBC Department of Classics

This illustrated talk will present the sprawling history and archaeology of the northern Aegean island of Lemnos from its 12,000 BC first inhabitants (among the earliest in the Greek islands) to its key role as an Allied base in the First World War campaign at Gallipoli. In between we'll see two of the largest and most important Early Bronze Age settlements in the Aegean at Myrrina and Poliochni with their well built houses and rich burials, the mysterious pre-Greek culture of the Pelasgi, the sprawling ancient theatre at the Greek capital of Hephaisteia, the strange cult of the Kabeiroi, and the castles of the Byzantine and Italian settlers of the Middle Ages. Professor Williams recently spent some time on Lemnos with the Italian excavators at Hephaisteia and will talk about their work too.

28 November 2011 at 7:30pm

Amorgόs

Gwyneth Lewis, Coordinator, Classical Studies

Langara College

Pirates and priests and politicians, refugees and exiles, lovers and scholars and monks and misogynists: since it was first settled more than 5000 years ago, the remote Cycladic island of Amorgόs has seen a tremendous variety of people arrive at its shores. The traces of some, like the Cycladic farmers, are to be found only in the landscape; of others, like Molly Mackenzie, an Ottawa woman who fell in love with the island and lived there into her nineties, only in the written record

Pharos Dates 2011/2012

October 24, 2011
November 28, 2011
January 30, 2012
February 27, 2012
March 26, 2012
April 30, 2010

Pharos 2010/2011

Monday October 25, 2010 at 7:30 pm
If at first you don’t succeed, fight dirty: magic, curses and love in the ancient Greek world
Professor Siobhan McElduff, UBC Department of Classical, Near East & Religious Studies

Women turned into horses. Voodoo dolls.  Curses, potions and smelly unguents. This talk will examine the wild and sometimes terrifying world of magic in the ancient Greek world - and tell you how to avoid having your spouse turned into a horse

Monday November 29, 2010 at 7:30 pm

Greek Gods in my Life: 42 Years of Working in Greek Sanctuaries

Professor Hector Williams, UBC Department of Classical, Near East & Religious Studies

Prof. Williams, one of Pharos' founders and former director of the Canadian Institute in Greece, will talk about some of the sacred places of ancient Greece, focusing on sanctuaries of Isis, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis and Athena at which he has worked.

Monday January 31, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Grecian Cohen:  Leonard Cohen and Hydra
Professor Ira Nadel, UBC Department of English

This illustrated talk will explore the long association between the singer/ writer Leonard Cohen and Greece. It will not only explore the use of Greece in his work, but the importance of life on Hydra for his creativity,  productivity and longevity. How, in short, has Greece contributed to Cohen's development as an artist?

 
Professor Nadel's recent book, VARIOUS POSITIONS - A Life of Leonard Cohen - is the first time Cohen himself has worked with a biographer. He contributed many of his never-before-seen letters, scholarly papers, poems, song lyrics and photographs.  While researching this - in Cohen's words - 'benignly tolerated' biography, Nadel went to the island of Hydra, Montreal, Nashville, New York, Los Angeles and the Mt. Baldy Zen Center in the southern California mountains. At each stop, stories and experiences occurred that involved the biographer and his subject, from finding a lost manuscript of his first novel in a California garage to encountering more than one of his former girlfriends. 


Monday February 28, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Exploring an unknown Greek City: the first six years of Greek Canadian fieldwork at Kastro Kallithea in Thessaly

Professor Margiet Haagsma, Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta

Director of the archaeological and architectural survey at the kastro at Kallithea, Greece, Dr. Haagsma's specialty is the archaeology of Greece with a specific focus on ancient urbanization and the archaeology of domestic space. She is especially interested in urbanization processes and domestic organization in mainland Greece during the Classical and Hellenistic periods.

Monday March 28, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Women Ventriloquizing Women: Explorations and Extensions of Classical Myth

Professor Susanna Braund, UBC Department of Classical, Near East & Religious Studies

Prof. Braund will discuss the way in which contemporary women poets and novelists choose to rework stories about women from classical mythology. She will draw on texts by Louise Glück, Margaret Atwood, Marguerite Yourcenar, Carol Ann Duffy, and Ursula K. LeGuin. We will find our writers bringing familiar material out of the realm of story-telling and into the modern world, making it strange and unstrange in curious ways.

Monday April 25, 2011 at 7:30

Greek Music & Dance Evening

Presented by

Dimitrios Kontogiannis and the Dimitrios Dancers and Players

Pharos' 30th Anniversary Season concludes with a festive evening of Greek music and dance.  Refreshments will be served.