The annual Dimitri and Irmgard Pallas Lecture in Modern Greek Studies

The Lecture Series

A gift agreement, negotiated between the Foundation for Modern Greek Studies and the Regents of the University of Michigan for the benefit of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, established the Dr. Dimitri and Irmgard Pallas Annual Lecture in Modern Greek Studies. Its purpose is to provide an annual lecture “to promote greater awareness of modern Greek history and its artistic, scientific, philosophical, ethical, political, and other contributions to civilization. Drawing on its ancient (classical) and Renaissance (Byzantine) traditions, Greek culture has continued to explore and disseminate the values of logos, cosmos, polis, episteme, techne, philia, phronesis, metron, and above all anthropos. These values are of central importance to the contemporary quest for a shared, meaningful world.” The lecture will bring annually to Michigan an eminent speaker of international reputation who offers new views on significant phenomena by drawing on the Greek experience since the end of the Byzantine era.

The Donors

Dr. Dimitri Pallas, a native of Greece, studied at the University of Athens and did graduate work in the United States. He was Senior Staff Cardiologist at the Division of Cardiology in the Henry Ford Health System at Fairlane. He is a Founding Member of the American Hellenic Congress and Founder and President of the Foundation for Modern Greek Studies. Irmgard Baier Pallas is a native of Germany and fluent speaker of Greek. She has taught German Language and Literature at the Goethe Institute in Athens and at Wayne State University.

Previous Pallas Lectures

2020 — Yannis Hamilakis
(Brown University) Archaeologies of Contemporary Migration: Border Assemblages, Global Apartheid, and the Decolonial Potential

2019 — Kostis Kourelis
(Franklin & Marshall College) Excavating Home: Archaeologies of the Greek American Experience 

2018 — Johanna Hanink
(Brown University) Philhellenism and the Invention of American History 

2017 — Yiorgos Anagnostou
(Ohio State University) Speaking Greek at the American University Over the Last Two Centuries 

2016 — Marina Terkourafi
(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) Language and Politics in Greece Today: The New Face of an Old Problem

2015 — Andrew R. Casper
(Miama University) How Greek was El Greco? 

2014 — Neovi Karakatsanis
(Indiana University South Bend) Fact or Fiction: What More Do We Know about American Involvement in the 1967 Greek Military Coup?

2013 — Stathis Gourgouris
(Columbia University) Cavafy's Debt

2012 — Alexander Kitroeff
(Haverford College) Ethnicity Beyond the Ethnic Enclave: Greek Americans in Brooklyn

2011 — Gregory Jusdanis
(Ohio State University) On Greek Friendship

2010— Karen Van Dyck
(Columbia University) Translations, Anthologies, and their Critical Excess

2009 — Fani-Maria Tsigakou
(Benaki Museum, Athens) Reconstructing History: Images of Romantic Hellenism

2008 — Andre Gerolymatos
(Simon Frasier University) The Struggle for Greek Independence and the International Diplomatic War in the 1820s

2007 — Maestro Constantine Kitsopoulos
(Queens Symphony Orchestra, Director/Chatham Opera, Founder and Director) Toward a Greek National Music          
2006 — Helen C.
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art) Byzantium Revisited: The Mosaics of Hagia Sophia in the Twentieth Century

2005 — Kevin Featherstone
(London School of Economics and Political Science) Why is Greece Becoming So Hard
to Govern?

2004 — Dan Georgakas
(CUNY) The New and Future Greek America

2003 — Stathis Kalyvas
(Yale) Violence and Civil War: the 1940s in Greece Seen “From Below”