3 significant core themes, 12 different meetings, 78 hours of “investigation”, 17 distinguished speakers: this year’s Cavafy Archive educational programme begins and it is geared towards all audiences! Register your participation.

The Cavafy Archive and the Onassis Foundation open once again the doors of the Onassis Library and welcome you to a rich programme of educational initiatives taking place from February until July 2018; the core and starting point of these activities is always the poetry of the great Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavafy.

Educational programmes for a wide audience, as well as for students, researchers, academics are going to introduce us this year to the work of C.P. Cavafy, to showcase new approaches to his work and open new roads in Cavafian research.

Ι. Cycle of Open Lessons of the Cavafy Archive

The “Cycle of Open Lessons of the Cavafy Archive” is going to be held for the fourth time in 2018. This time, Art in its multiple forms becomes the core theme of the lectures as we are going to explore Cavafy’s own poetic craft, the poet’s own discourse about art, the forms artists take in his poetry and the role of the arts and their reception in his work. The aim of the lessons is to highlight interrelated thematic motifs, techniques, images and ideas in the Cavafian oeuvre. In this context, the analysis of selected poems spans other texts of the poet, as well as the work of other Greek and non-Greek artists. Curator of this year’s Cycle of Open Lessons is Erasmia Stavropoulou, Professor Emerita of Modern Greek Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and member of the Cavafy Archive Academic Committee. The lessons of this cycle are geared towards all audience, regardless of their familiarity with Cavafy’s poetry or poetry in general.

Dates and themes of the Cycle of Open Lessons of the Cavafy Archive:

“To Art, Desires and sensations”

●    Friday 16 February 2018, 19.00| Onassis Library (56, Amalias Avenue)
Theme: C.P. Cavafy: The poetics of the half-glimpsed
Speaker: Dimitris Polychronakis, Associate Professor, Division of Byzantine and Modern Greek Philology, University Of Crete

●    Friday 30 March 2018, 19.00-21.00 | Onassis Library (56, Amalias Avenue)
Theme: The coaxial poetics of C.P. Cavafy and Marcel Proust
Speaker: Panagiotis S. Poulos, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics, Department of Theory and History of Art, Athens School of Fine Arts

●    Friday 27 April 2018, 19.00 | Onassis Library (56, Amalias Avenue)
Theme: Poems about poets in the work of C.P. Cavafy
Speaker: Dr. Nina Palaiou, Hellenic Open University

●    Friday 18 May 2018, 19.00| Onassis Library (56, Amalias Avenue)
Theme: Artists, craftsmen, amateurs: shades of cavafian irony cast on imaginary colleagues.
Speaker: Angela Kastrinaki, Professor of Modern Greek Philology, Division of Byzantine and Modern Greek Philology University of Crete

●    Friday 25 May 2018, 19.00-21.00
Theme: The anti-economy of jouissance: Eroticism and art in the work of C.P. Cavafy
Speaker: Panagiotis Roilos, George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

●    Friday 15 June 2018, 19.00-21.00
Theme: Let me submit to Art: the pictorial poetic of C.P. Cavafy
Speaker: Peter Jeffreys, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Suffolk
Please note: THE LECTURE WILL BE HELD IN ENGLISH

Attendance is free. Booking is essential. Tickets must be reserved at education@onassis.org. For more information: 2103713001 (Monday - Friday, 9.00-17.00)

ΙΙ. Lessons for students and researchers
Cycle of Research Seminars of the Cavafy Archive

The Onassis Library will host once more the “Cycle of Research Seminars of the Cavafy Archive” for students and researchers; the cycle for 2018 will have the general thematic title “Miscellaneous and Specialty: New archival assets and novel approaches to Cavafy research”.  The themes of the reception of the Cavafian work in Greece and abroad as well as its expanded cultural, sociological and historiographical perspectives shall serve as the main axes of analysis in this year’s Cycle of Research Seminars. Five young researchers, academics and Cavafy scholars are going to share with the audience their research around the the work of the Alexandrian poet, as well as the questions arising from their work in progress on relevant archival assets. After the end of each presentation, conversation between the speakers, the audience and other researchers follows. The Cavafy Archive Academic Committee commissions the curation of the Cycle of Research Seminars to specific individuals or research groups. The 2018 Cycle of Research Seminars is curated by Yiannis Papatheodorou, Associate Professor of Modern Greek Literature, University of Ioannina.

Dates and Themes of the Cycle of Research Seminars of the Cavafy Archive:

“Miscellaneous and Specialty: New archival assets and novel approaches to Cavafy research”

●    Thursday February 22 2018, 19:00 | Onassis Library (56, Amalias Avenue)
Theme: C.P. Cavafy, a poet of the middle world
Speaker: Sophie Iakovidou, Assistant Professor in Modern Greek Literature, Democritus University of Thrace

●    Thursday April 26 2018, 19:00  | Onassis Library (56, Amalias Avenue)
Theme: Cavafy and the “brats”: Episodes from the Athenian interwar reception of Cavafy
Speaker: Kostas Karavidas, postdoctoral researcher and instructor in Greek literature, University of Ioannina

●    Thursday May 3 2018, 19:00| Onassis Library (56, Amalias Avenue)
Theme: Dimitrios Kapetanakis and Cavafy in England
Speaker: Emmanouela Kantzia, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature

●    Thursday May 10 2018, 19:00| Onassis Library (56, Amalias Avenue)
Theme: Christianity and flesh in the oeuvre of C.P. Cavafy
Speaker: Vasiliki Dimoula, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Adjunct Instructor Hellenic Open University and Open University of Cyprus

●    Thursday May 17 2018, 19:00| Onassis Library (56, Amalias Avenue)
Theme: The Cavafian oeuvre as a significant example for postcolonial theory
Speaker: Georgia Pateridou, Assistant Professor of Greek Literature, Hellenic Open University

Attendance is free. Booking is essential. Tickets must be reserved at education@onassis.org. For more information: 2103713001 (Monday - Friday, 9.00-17.00)

III. 2nd International Cavafy Summer School for researchers
The call to researchers to apply for the “International Cavafy Summer School” is still open. The “International Cavafy Summer School” is going to take place for the second year running at the Onassis Library.  This year, during the week of July 9-15, researchers from all over the world and academics will share their work and thoughts on C.P. Cavafy’s poetry. The theme of this year’s Summer School is “Cavafy and Antiquity”. The International Cavafy Summer School 2018 is curated by Constanze Güthenke, Associate Professor of Greek Literature, Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford and Dimitris Papanikolaou, Associate Professor in Modern Greek at the University of Oxford.

The International Cavafy Summer School is a major international annual scholarly event organised by the Cavafy Archive and the Onassis Foundation, the first such regular event to be devoted exclusively to Cavafy and the impact of his work. Doctoral students, post-doctoral researchers and early career academics whose academic interests are related to Comparative Literature, World Literature, Cavafy Studies, Modern Greek Studies, Classics and associated disciplines are encouraged to submit an application. The open call for the “2nd International Cavafy Summer School” was announced on the November 21 2017; the deadline of the open call is on January 31 2018.

More information regarding the International Cavafy Summer School 2018 can be found here.

Onassis Foundation – Cavafy Archive
Afroditi Panagiotakou, Director of Culture
Efi Tsiotsiou, Executive Director
Theodoros Chiotis, Coordinator of Scholarly Research & Digital Development, Cavafy Archive Marianna Christofi, Coordinator of Communication & Activities, Cavafy Archive
Aggeliki Mousiou, Assistant of Scholarly Research, Cavafy Archive
Prodromos Tsiavos, Legal Counsel to the Cavafy Archive and on matters of digitisation

More information about the educational programmes of the Cavafy Archive 2017-2018 can be found here.

Onassis Library: 56, Amalia Avenue, 2103713001


Τhe Cavafy Archive in brief
The Onassis Foundation acquired the Cavafy Archive at the end of 2012. In this manner, a potential fragmentation and dispersal of the Cavafy Archive was avoided and the Archive remains in Greece. Our mission is the protection of the physical archive, the creation of the necessary conditions to ensure its openness and accessibility to researchers and to the wider public; furthermore, our mission is to ensure the dissemination of the Cavafy oeuvre and the international appeal of Cavafy’s poetry. In the context of a modern approach of the poet’s work, the Cavafy Archive organises a series of educational initiatives and events, both inside and outside Athens, geared towards both middleschool students and adults, both seasoned poetry readers and beginners, showcasing new approached to the work of the Alexandrian poet. Safeguarding and promoting cultural inheritance is one of the Onassis Foundation’s primary commitments, being reflected in the Foundation’s more general policy in the fields of culture, the arts and sciences as well as its public benefit mission. The acquisition and management of the Cavafy Archive falls precisely in this context.

Onassis Foundation in brief
The Onassis Foundation was founded in 1975, as specifically outlined in Aristotle Onassis’ will. Its aim has been to contribute to crucial aspects of Greek society: health, education, culture, and social solidarity. The efforts and actions of the Foundation have consistently aimed (and continue to do so) at ensuring the access of as many people as possible to institutions, opportunities, and services, necessary for social prosperity and cohesion. Its long-term aim has been to release the creative potential of Greek society and ensure a better present and a more optimistic future.