Modern Greek Studies Program University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Modern Greek Studies Program

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

List of Events

 Public Talk: Aegean Adventures

Speaker: Mr. Peter Tomaras, Novelist, local business executive and University of Illinois Alumnus

Date: Feb 17, 2016

Time: 4:00 pm

Location: Room 1080 (Lucy Ellis Lounge), Foreign Languages Building (FLB), 707 South Matthews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Event Description: The Modern Greek Studies program at the University of Illinois is proud to host University Of Illinois Alumnus and novelist Peter T. Tomaras. Mr. Tomaras will read an excerpt from his recently-published novel, Innkeeper and, as he discusses the challenges of writing fiction, will share some of his extensive life experiences in Greece and Cyprus that provide the foundation for this novel, as well as his previous book, Resistors.

Mr. Tomaras has long been a successful writer, having published more than 200 non-fiction articles in national, regional, and local journals. To adapt his journalistic voice to fiction, for three years he attended weekly edit sessions at the Red Herring Fiction Writers Workshop at the University of Illinois. He later published novel excerpts in The Hellenic Journal, and in the Blue Moon anthologies published by the Red Herring Workshop.

Mr. Tomaras was born in Champaign of a Greek father and an American mother. During a year in Greece as a teenager, he fell in love with a blond Athenian and, three years later, married her at St. Demetrios in Psychiko. One of his many return trips to Greece was at the time of the July, 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Personally intrigued by that tragedy, he made three research trips to Cyprus, being the first person with Greek surname to ever cross into the occupied North, then back into Cyprus. He has also traveled in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey. Tomaras has lectured on Cyprus, and published articles on Cyprus in The Washington Times, The Hellenic Journal and Greek Accent.

Tomaras has spent a lifetime in the hospitality industry, with a special fascination for large, upscale hotels. Behind-the-scenes research at major hotels in France, Spain, Greece, and Cyprus prepared him to write authoritatively on the international hotel business for Innkeeper. The book honors hoteliers and the U.S. Foreign Service, but especially Mr. Tomaras’ Corinthian heritage. Innkeeper begins and ends in Greece; Resistors begins and ends in Cyprus. Both are love stories that feature strong female characters, one Cypriot, one American, who captivate Greek-American protagonists. Along the way, the author entangles his characters in actual historical events, including the collapse of the governments of Cyprus, Greece, and the United States in that fateful summer of 1974.

As culmination to his decades-long career in the hospitality industry, during which he has managed, taught, and consulted, Mr. Tomaras now practices as a litigation support expert, assisting attorneys with hospitality-industry cases

Local business executive and novelist Peter T. Tomaras will present a free-ranging discussion of his journey from a journalistic avocation to the challenge of creating engaging fiction—in his case, two novels. Mr. Tomaras will primarily discuss his recently-published novel, Innkeeper, which begins and ends in Greece and, as it relates the love story of its protagonists, evokes many of his life experiences. During years of immersion in his hotel career, story lines formed in Mr. Tomaras’ mind that, once he found time and opportunity, he was compelled to get onto paper, then computer files, and ultimately into published form.

He first wrote Innkeeper but, unable to find a publisher, he shelved it. Twenty years later, he wrote a more “commercial” novel, Resistors, this one beginning and ending in Cyprus. Like Innkeeper, Resistors is first a love story, but falls into the action/adventure category, whereas the conflicts in Innkeeper, a more literary work, are psychological. Both novels embroil their characters in actual historical events, especially those of the summer of 1974 when the governments of Cyprus, Greece, and the United States all fell within a matter of weeks.

Mr. Tomaras will read a brief excerpt from Innkeeper, but will also share his inspirations and his creative process. Chekov said that writers lead double lives: one, the sunlit life of mundane joys and frustrations, shared with everyone; the other, a shadowy life of dreams and imagination. Mr.

Tomaras says, “I imagine, and I dream. As James Michener said, ‘Writing is a lonely business…you have to hold onto the idea that what you’re writing is something somebody will want to read.’”

 Movie Night: Peppermint (English subtitles)

Date: Feb 24, 2016

Time: 6:00 pm

Location: Room 1080 (Luy Ellis Lounge), Foreing Language Building (FLB), 707

South Matthews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

Free pizzas and beverages

Movie Description: Stefanos is a man at his 40’s who has inherited a fortune from his mother’s aunt. One day Manolis, his schoolmate, calls him and invites him to a party featuring an old friends’ reunion. Surprised and delighted to hear his old friend’s voice, Stefanos travels back in time, to his childhood and his youth, and remembers his extraordinary relationship with his cousin Marina, his best friend and first love. In a great long flashback, he remembers the utmost detail of his childhood, the family reunions, travels, acquaintances, and most importantly cousin Marina. By the coming of age, the dimension of the close friendship between Stefanos and Marina goes out of hand, and reaches its peak at a party when both are at their 20’s. That party, that house, Marina… It won’t be the last turn in Stefanos’ life involving the very same trio…

Director: Costas Kapakas; Written by: Costas Kapakas; Starring: Georges Corraface, Any

Loulou, Alexandros Mylonas, Nikoletta Vlavianou, Tasos Palatzidis

1999: Greek State Film Awards for Best Film

1999: Thessaloniki International Film Festival for Golden Alexander

 Public Lecture: “From the Peloponnese to the Prairie: Greek Confectioners in Central Illinois 1800-1930”

Speaker: Dr. Ann Beck, Eastern Illinois University, independent scholar and third-generation confectioner in business with her sister at the original site of their grandfather’s store in Central Illinois

Date: Mar 10, 2016

Time: 5:30 pm

Location: Room 1022, Lincoln Hall, 707 South Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

Abstract: This research is a rural micro-history of first-generation Greeks to central Illinois focusing specifically on those involved in the confectionary trade. It utilizes a case study of her grandfather, Constantin “Gus” Flesor, a Greek migrant who settled in Tuscola, Illinois. His journey reflects elements of the migration experience of more than 160 such Greek migrant confectioners in central Illinois. Issues of settlement, Americanization, resistance and identity are woven throughout the narrative.

Lecturer’s Biographical Note: Dr. Beck is an independent scholar and third-generation confectioner in business with her sister at the original site of their grandfather’s store in central Illinois. Their story has been highlighted nationally in journals and other media, such as the “CBS Evening News,” local PBS programs, one of which was nominated for a regional Emmy award.

 Public Lecture: The Spoiled Children of History: The Formation of the Greek State, 18th-21st Centuries

Speaker: Dr. Kostas Kostis, Professor of Economic and Social History, Department of

Economics, University of Athens

Date: Apr 7, 2016

Time: 5:30 pm

Location:Room 1080 (Lucy Ellis Lounge), Foreing Languages Building (FLB), 707 South Matthews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Cost

Sponsors: The Onassis Foundation (USA); Program in Modern Greek Studies, UIUC; School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics (SLCL), UIUC Contact

Description: In this presentation Professor Kostas Kostis will discuss his book Τα

Κακομαθημένα Παιδιά της Ιστορίας (The Spoiled Children of History) and more particularly his way of understanding the formation of the Greek state following a realist approach. The essential factor in understanding the process of state formation in Greece is the geopolitical dynamics which obliged political elites to react in the challenges of the environment.

Biographical Information: Kostas Kostis was born in Athens in 1957. He studied economics at the Department of Economics of the University of Athens and then economic history at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales (Paris), where he defended his Ph.D. thesis in 1985. Since 2004 he is professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Athens and director of the Economic History Division. From 2006 until 2009 he occupied the Chair of Modern and Contemporary Greek Studies at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris. Among

his recent publications : « Les enfants gates de l’histoire ». A history of the Greek state formation, 18th-21th centuries, Polis publ., in greek, “La paix introuvable: le cas grec”,

St.Audouin – Rouzeau et Chr. Prochasson, Sortir de la Grande Guerre. Le monde et l’après 1918, Tallandier, Paris 2008, « The formation of the state in Greece, 1830-1914 », in F.Birtek and Th.

Dragonas (eds), Citizenship and the Nation – State in Greece and Turkey, Routledge, Oxon

2005, History of the National Bank of Greece, 1914-1940, Athens 2004 (in greek)

 Dr. Arthur Nikelli Annual Lecture: From Missionary Schools to Franchised Universities: Transnational Interactions and the Transformation of the Greek Educational System

Speaker: Dr. Tassos Anastassiadis, Assistant Professor of History and Phrixos B.

Papachristidis Chair in Modern Greek and Greek-Canadian Studies, McGill University Date: Apr 14, 2016

Time: 5:00 pm

Location: Room 405, Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Cost

Sponsors: Program in Modern Greek Studies, UIUC (through the Dr. Arthur Nikelli

Endowed Fund); School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics (SLCL), UIUC;

Russian, East European and Eurasian Center (REEEC) Contact

Description: This talk deals with the mechanics of the transformation of the Greek educational system since the inception of the Greek state and up until today and more specifically with the fundamental role of transnational actors present in Greece. Rather than being « foreign » to the Greek educational system, these actors ever since the 19th c. have been symbiotic to it, alternatively playing a complementary, supplementary, pioneer or antagonistic role. Their persistence and attractivity is due both to the integration of the Greek system in a global educational system and to specific power equilibria within Greece.

 Houston-Papadimitriou Award Ceremony

Date: Apr 27, 2016

Time: 4:30 pm

Location: Room 1080 (Lucy Ellis Lounge), Foreign Languages Building (FLB), 707 South Matthews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Sponsors: Program in Modern Greek Studies, UIUC (through the Houston Family

Endowed Fund); School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics (SLCL), UIUC