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Harvard Summer Program in Olympia, Greece

This page contains content from the Summer School 2009. For current information, visit the Harvard Summer School website at www.summer.harvard.edu.

Information on the programs being offered summer 2010 will be available online in early September.

A survey of cross-cultural interaction from ancient times to the present

Faculty: Gregory Nagy and Olympia Fellows
(8 credits: UN, GR) Limited enrollment

Program dates: June 29–July 31, 2009
Application deadline: February 27
Cost: $7,000

Olympia—birthplace of the Olympic Games—is a historical and symbolic reminder of the ideals of peace and international cooperation. Inspired by this unique site, the program seeks to promote cross-cultural understanding by combining historical, literary, philosophical, and linguistic approaches to cultural exchange. In the second half of the program we move to the facilities of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Nafplion, a seaside town full of modern Greek history. Students are exposed to historical periods from the ancient world to the medieval and modern eras. Thanks to the wide-ranging interests of its faculty, the program offers a rich curriculum that includes seminars, guest lectures, and weekend excursions, such as guided tours, and dramatic and musical performances in the most important historical and archaeological sites of Greece. In the past seven years, the program has attracted students from many countries, including the United States, England, France, Bulgaria, Greece, Guatemala, Turkey, China, and the Philippines.

Note: The first three weeks are spent in Olympia and the last two weeks in Nafplio. Students are expected to arrive in Olympia on the weekend preceding the beginning of the program. Two bus trips will be arranged on Saturday, June 27, and Sunday, June 28, to take students from Athens International Airport to Olympia. Successful candidates are notified of the two departure times in late spring.

There are weekend visits to important sites in different parts of Greece, such as Athens, Delphi, Sparta, and Mystras/Monemvasia. During the week, there are also shorter beach-trips near Olympia and Nafplio. Archeological visits to sites closer to our bases include ancient Olympia, Mycenae, and the theater of Epidaurus—where we attend a dramatic performance every summer.

Course of study

For this course and its seminars, there are no prerequisites required. All seminars are in English and students are always surrounded by proficient users of the English language. Student do have the opportunity to pick up some Greek, if they wish, through their interactions with Greek students and the immersion in the towns and experiences of Olympia, Nafplio, and the various other places we visit across Greece.

LITR S-107 Study Abroad in Greece: Cross-Cultural Contact Between East and West from Ancient Times to the Present

This course focuses on the problems and possibilities of cross-cultural contact between East and West from ancient times to the present. Its aim is to expose students to historical, philosophical, literary, and political models for studying this interaction through a series of interrelated weeklong seminars. Seminar topics are listed below.

I. Empire

A. Homer as a “Spokesman” for the Athenian Empire (Gregory Nagy)

The earliest form of the Athenian empire, the Delian League, was considered an expression of Ionian identity. This identity, once centered on the sacred island of Delos, was modified when the Treasury of the Delian League was transferred from Delos to Athens, sometime around the middle of the fifth century BC. In terms of this transfer, the Ionian identity of the empire could be maintained and even reaffirmed most consistently on the basis of the idea that Athens is the mother city, or metropolis, of all Ionian cities.

 A spokesman for the ideological world of the Delian League—and for the political reality of the Athenian empire—was Homer himself, figured as a universal poet and educator. This Homer was an imperial Homer, ideologized as koinos (“common”) to all Hellenes—at least, to all Hellenes in the Athenian empire. The status of Homer as the koinos polites (“common citizen”) of all Ionian cities is linked to his central role in the pan-Ionian festival of the Delia. That festival, as we know independently from Thucydides, was reshaped in the late fifth century by the Athenian statesman Nikias, who sought to link the myths and rituals of the pan-Ionian Delia with the cultural and political agenda of the Delian League—that is, of the Athenian empire. In this seminar, I offer an analysis of the pan-Ionian festival of the Delia, focusing on the acknowledged role of Homer as the spokesman for the Delia and, by extension, for the Delian League. I then compare the pan-Hellenic festival of the Olympic contests, held in Olympia.

In the seminar, students are guided through a set of relevant readings in translation of selected passages taken from Homeric poetry, and the lives of Homer, Thucydides, and Plato.

B. The Byzantine Empire: Ideology, Propaganda, and Subversion (Dimiter Angelov)

The Byzantine Empire (330–1453), the medieval successor state to imperial Rome, dominated the politics of the Eastern Mediterranean for more than a millennium. By looking at textual and visual sources, this brief seminar explores the Byzantine construction of an ideology of empire—an amalgamation of Near Eastern, Hellenistic, Roman and Christian ideas expressed in art, court rhetoric, diplomacy, and ceremonial—and the ways this ideology was conveyed to the elites and to common people. The course also explores challenges to the ideology of empire, especially in the later period of Byzantine history, ranging from lingering Roman republicanism to Hellenic protonationalism and Platonic social utopias.

C. The Ottoman Empire: Power, Diplomacy, and Representation (Dimitris Kastritsis)

In the classical Ottoman Empire of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, sultanic power was expressed among other areas in art, literature, diplomacy, and the functioning of government itself. This seminar begins by taking a structuralist approach to the centralized Ottoman state of the classical period, which is then complicated by the introduction of dissenting and peripheral voices. By examining a variety of textual and visual sources, including the sultan's palace of Topkapi, we try to gain a basic understanding of the classical Ottoman state and society in all its complexity. In the process, we touch upon more general problems of textual and historical analysis. A recurring theme throughout the seminar is the historical roots of the Ottoman image in Europe, which lingers to this day.

D. Imperial Ways of Knowing: History, Power, and Politics (Sahar Bazzaz)

This seminar explores the links between European modernity and colonial expansion. The diachronic nature of the seminar allows students to think about the processes of change that have brought about the present political, social, and cultural relations among the regions of the Mediterranean. We focus primarily on the Enlightenment and colonialism, looking critically at Edward Said's Orientalism as well as works addressing the question of colonialism by European intellectuals and thinkers, such as Marx, Renan, Comte, Camus, and LeCorbusier.

II. European Encounters

A. Languages of Exile (Yota Batsaki)

Exile is often thought of as geographical displacement, but it may just as well be understood as a linguistic condition. Recent theory dwells on the relationship of language and translation to notions of belonging, often going as far as to expand exile into a universal linguistic predicament. We examine the potential of such thinking to complicate notions of familial or national identity. The seminar engages with theoretical and autobiographical writings on exile, translation, and cosmopolitanism—Edward Said, Jacques Derrida, Barbara Johnson—and with two literary fictions by Rhea Galanaki and Amin Maalouf, built around the lives of real, if scantly known, exiles.

B. Mediterranean Encounters in the Modern Period, 1850–2000 (Ilham Khuri-Makdisi)

This seminar explores the Mediterranean as a space of encounters, circulations, and exchanges of people, commodities, ideas, and ideologies but also as a space that divides as well as unites. We also analyze the construction of various discourses on the Mediterranean, such as the infamous concept of Mediterraneita promoted by Italian fascism, and connect these discourses to political projects. The seminar uses visual material, such as photographs and postcards, as well as primary sources, such as guidebooks, travel journals, and political speeches.

C. Late Nineteenth-Century Star Actors and Their Rise to International Fame (Anna Stavrakopoulou)

In the second half of the nineteenth century, while the Romantic movement was ceding its place to other literary movements, major changes took place representing a turning point in theater history—the shaping of the first stage directors in Europe, as well as the emergence of major playwrights, like Henrik Ibsen, who revolutionized the stage with his dramas. At the same time, at the peak of colonialism, Europe started exporting stage actors who dazzled audiences at the Comédie Francaise and Broadway alike. In this course we explore the star system of the time, with Adelaide Ristori, Eleonora Duse, Benoit-Constant Coquelin, and above all Sarah Bernhardt, who broke the barriers of their countries and gaining international acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.

D. “Our Greece”: Western Visions of Greece (George Syrimis)

This seminar examines the constructions of the terms “Hellenic” and “Greece” from the Enlightenment to the present through the prism of what we have come to call Western culture. The course explores the relationship between adaptation and interpretation through various media—literature, film, philosophy, literary criticism—as well as the social movements that have informed our concept of the Hellenic (political, sexual, aesthetic, religious, etc.). The seminar addresses the way in which ancient Greek civilization was refigured as an ideal cultural template, symbolic origin, and philosophical reflection for both contemporary Greeks and European Philhellenes. Materials include work by Winckelmann, Lord Byron, Georgios Vizyenos, Thomas Mann, Cavafy, Nietzsche, Gyorgy Lukacs, Stratis Myrivilis, and Gore Vidal.

Course credit

For Harvard College students, this program counts as one full-year course (8 credits) of degree credit. Harvard students should negotiate their course credit individually with their departments/concentrations.

Transfer credit. Harvard Summer School courses and credits are accepted toward degrees at most colleges and universities. Since degree requirements vary among schools, students are advised to obtain transfer credit approval from their home institutions before registering for Harvard Summer School courses.

Faculty

Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature in the Department of the Classics and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University; Director, Harvard University Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC

Senior Fellows

Dimiter G. Angelov (Medieval and Byzantine History), Lecturer and Research Fellow, University of Birmingham

Yota Batsaki (Comparative Literature), Newton Trust Lecturer in English, Cambridge University

Sahar Bazzaz (History and Middle Eastern Studies), Assistant Professor of History, College of the Holy Cross

Dimitris Kastritsis (History and Middle Eastern Studies), Academic Fellow in Ottoman History, University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom

Ilham Khuri-Makdisi (History and Middle Eastern Studies), Assistant Professor of History, Northeastern University

Anna Stavrakopoulou (Theater Studies and Modern Greek Literature), Assistant Professor of Theater Studies, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece

Visiting Fellows

George Syrimis, (Comparative Literature), Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Associate Chair of the Program in Hellenic Studies, Yale University

Application

All students, whereever they study—in the United States or abroad—can apply. In the past, participants have been recent high school graduates, undergraduates, graduate students, or independent scholars. Please note: students must be at least 18 years old to apply.

The application materials, outlined below, are due February 27:

• An application form (applications for this program are no longer being accepted)
• Official transcripts (sent directly from schools to the address below; unofficial copies of transcripts are accepted for Harvard College students only)
• A $50 nonrefundable application fee
• A supplementary statement that describes interest in the program and any relevant travel experience abroad (previous travel is not a prerequisite for this program), and that exhibits proof of English language proficiency for students whose first language is not English

Applications should be addressed as follows:

Matilda West
Study Abroad Coordinator
Harvard Summer School
51 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Students will be notified of admission decisions by mid-March.

Cost

The cost of the program is $7,000, plus a nonrefundable $50 application fee. In addition, students are responsible for a health insurance fee ($165; waived if students have US insurance that provides coverage outside the United States) and for transportation to and from Olympia. The cost of the program covers the following:

• Tuition
• Room, breakfast, and dinner
• All scheduled excursions and extracurricular activities

Program directors will advise students of likely additional expenses.

Payment deadlines

For those admitted to the program, a nonrefundable deposit of $700 must be received by April 15 to secure a place in the program. Payment in full is due by May 15. A $100 late fee will be charged for payments received after this date.

Funding

Harvard College students are eligible for funding through the Harvard College Office of International Programs (OIP), as well as a variety of centers around campus.  All Harvard Summer School study abroad programs qualify for summer funding. Programs of eight weeks or longer in duration (including extensions of Harvard Summer School Programs approved by faculty members) qualify for Rockefeller International Experience Grants; programs of shorter duration qualify for other summer grants.

Students may consult the Funding Sources Database for more information on all sources of funding. Please note that the funding application deadline for summer grants and Rockefeller International Experience Grants is February 27.

To apply for any study abroad funding, students need to provide information about the program’s budget, submit an application through the Common Application for Research and Travel (CARAT), as well as supplementary documents to the relevant center, if necessary. Additional information on the funding application process is available through CARAT.

Also see the Harvard College Financial Aid Office summer school page for information about assistance.

Other Harvard students may be eligible for financial assistance through their Harvard financial aid offices. Students enrolled at other institutions should consult their respective financial aid offices.

Accommodations

Accommodations are provided in the Hotel Europa. Classes take place in a fully equipped seminar room—including video projector, printer, computer, and Internet access—within the hotel. Students share double-occupancy rooms and eat buffet breakfasts and dinners at the hotel; they make their own arrangements for lunch. Dinner is usually eaten outside in the garden. The hotel provides a free wireless Internet connection in every room, a tennis court, and a swimming pool.

In Nafplion we stay at the Hotel Amalia. Classes take place at the state-of-the-art facilities of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies, whose Greek branch was recently inaugurated.

Safety in Greece: Greece is a member State of the European Union, and very safe. Students can find more info at the U.S. Department of State travel website.

Additional information

Program inquiries:

Teresa Wu, summergreece@chs.harvard.edu

Academic and administrative coordinators:

• Dimiter Angelov, Lecturer, University of Birmingham, UK, d.angelov@bham.ac.uk
  
• Yota Batsaki, Newton Trust Lecturer, University of Cambridge, UK, pb324@cam.ac.uk

Students with disabilities should contact the disability services coordinator as soon as possible: (617) 495-0977, (617) 495-9419 (TTY), or disabilities@dcemail.harvard.edu. Request-for-accommodation forms and supporting diagnostic documentation must be submitted by April 15. See the Disability Services page for more information about disability services, including request forms and guidelines for documentation.

Students applying for admission to Harvard’s study abroad programs should understand that although the University provides reasonable assistance and support to facilitate the participation of qualified students in its programs (including students with disabilities and health impairments), some of our programs are located in parts of the world where accommodations may not be readily available. Students are encouraged to be forthcoming with the disability services coordinator about any specific needs and functional limitations so that the Summer School can collaborate with those students in a way that fosters their safe participation and allows them to fully appreciate any barriers that they may face, depending on the location and rigors of the particular program.

Harvard Summer School is aware of the risks associated with international travel. Should the US Department of State issue a travel warning for any of the countries in which a study abroad program is planned, the program in that country may be canceled.

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