International Symposium (hybrid) co-organized by Aristotle University, Thessaloniki (Greece), Athens College (Greece), & University of Alberta (Canada)

Date: 25-26 May, 2024

Venue: Amphitheater I – Research Dissemination Centre AUTH

The writings, travels, and all forms of pilgrimage or periegetic homage of early twentieth century Modernist authors and artists reveal that their pursuits were imbued with the desire to decipher and understand the conditions of their own modernity. In H.D.’s writings, the notion of antiquity was not just linked to the Classic period, but it served as a trope to better comprehend the modernist angst of dispersion. But it was en route to Athens, Delphi, and Corfu when she and her lifelong partner, novelist, poet, and essayist Bryher (Winnifred Ellerman) were able to envision her “Greek stories.”

H.D.’s Hellenism appears to be a world resistant to postwar materiality charged with a “sense of persistent incipience, glimpses into beckoning ruins” as Susan McCabe notes in her study An Untold Love Story of Modernism. And though H.D. talks about her “Greek Novel,” the elusive, finalized version of this text is never retrieved in its entirety because her Greek novel has many versions: it is published and unpublished, it is present and vocal, it is taciturn and buried in her palimpsestic writings as well as half-concealed in scraps of journals, and in the lengthier poems she produced in the course of time as she was writing or not writing.

The International Symposium (hybrid) to be hosted by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki will attempt to re-visit and re-assemble H.D. ‘s Greek stories in the physical space where they were inspired. This interdisciplinary and international two-day event brings together an array of distinguished modernism scholars from Canada, U.S.A., and Europe in an attempt to re-envision the foundational contribution of Hellenism and Hellenic civilization within and outside the historical, cultural and linguistic premises of Modernism in relation to and beyond H.D.’s oeuvre.

Keynote speakers:

Susan McCabe (University of Southern California, U.S.A.)

Demetres Tryphonopoulos (University of Alberta, Canada)

For the symposium Program, registration information, and additional details, check the Symposium webpage.

For further inquiries, contact: modernism@enl.auth.gr

Organizing Committee:

Anna Fyta, Ph.D., (Independent Scholar, IB Instructor), Athens College, Greece

Tatiani Rapatzikou, Ph.D., (Associate Professor, Head of Dept. of American Literature and Culture, School of English), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Demetres Tryphonopoulos, Ph.D., (Dean & Executive Officer), University of Alberta, Augustana Campus, Canada