The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University and UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture are pleased to present Artemis Leontis, C.P. Cavafy Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, as part of this year's Fall Seminar Series. Join us for her virtual seminar on Sunday, October 25th at 3:00 PM PT entitled "Going after Eva Palmer Sikelianos.”

This event is free and open to the public.

Please be sure to register before Thursday, October 22nd, to receive a link for the webinar. This event will be recorded.

Abstract

For more than a decade, Artemis Leontis has carried out a recovery project researching and writing the life of Eva Palmer Sikelianos, publishing her biography in 2019. Leontis knew Palmer as a shadowy figure in Greek cultural history, known mostly as the wealthy American wife of the Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos, who spent all her money on his projects. Through intensive detective work, she has uncovered a bigger, more complicated story of a brilliant, beautiful, countercultural, queer woman who may be the most influential philhellene after Lord Byron. In this talk, she will speak of going “after” Eva Palmer Sikelianos in the double sense of pursuit and succession. She will recount some of her adventures pursuing the hidden archival resources of Palmer’s life, then foreground the stakes of modern encounters with the ancient Greeks in the light of spectrums of meaning found in Palmer' legacy.

Speaker bio

Artemis Leontis is C.P. Cavafy Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature, Chair of the Department of Classical Studies, and Director of the Modern Greek Program at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A Life in Ruins (2019), Culture and Customs of Greece (2009) and Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland (1995) and editor or coeditor of "What these Ithakas mean...: Readings in Cavafy (2002) and Greece: A Traveler's Literary Companion. She is currently creating a digital archive and editing a book of the correspondence of Eva Palmer with Natalie Barney, Colette, Renee Vivien, and others who were players in the cultural scene of early twentieth century Paris.