Belgian-born Professor Gonda Van Steen, who holds the Cassas Professorial Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Florida, will take part in the GOCMV 2015 public seminar series.
Her presentation, ‘Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece’, is scheduled for Wednesday 1 July at the Greek Centre, which recently successfully hosted events for the Melbourne Comedy Festival.
The GOCMV’s seminar series convenor, Dr Nick Dallas, had the following to say: “It has always been a long-term goal of the seminar series to be able to host a handful of international guest speakers every year, budgetary constraints have been the only roadblock. As Professor Van Steen will already be attending the Greek Studies conference at Adelaide’s Flinders University in June, the opportunity to host her in Melbourne was an obvious one.”
Specialising in Ancient Greek Theatre and Classical Tragedy, Van Steen is an expert on the works of Aristophanes, a playwright notorious for his bold political and sexual humour. Before the mid-1970s, the revival of the works of Aristophanes often suffered setbacks and acts of censorship. Nowadays, many theatre companies perform Aristophanes’ comedies to launch themselves in the competitive Athenian theatre scene. Van Steen’s prodigious research record includes the recently released academic monograph State of Emergency: Theatre and Public Performance under the Greek Military Dictatorship 0f 1967-1974, published by Oxford university Press.