The Greek Community of Melbourne’s Greek History and Culture Seminar series draws to a close for 2017 next week with a lecture from distinguished academic Professor Nikos Papastergiadis.
Taking place at the Greek Centre, he will draw from Homer’s Odyssey with a lecture titled ‘Learning Hospitality from Homer’.
The epic ancient work is a renowned poem of a homecoming, but is also a tale about the multiple worlds that Odysseus confronts with insight into the way a world is made – through cunning, reason and art.
Throughout his journey Odysseus encounters a variety of forms of hospitality and his efforts to create and restore order produce an unsettling vision of the meaning of hospitality, which will be broken down and explored in the lecture.
Currently Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne, Professor Papastergiadis undertook his studies at the University of Melbourne and University of Cambridge.
With Scott McQuire he founded the Spatial Aesthetics research cluster, and has also written extensively on culture, communication and art.
His sole-authored publications include Modernity as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004), Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006), Cosmopolitanism and Culture (2012), and Ambient Perspectives (2013).
He is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and co-chair of the Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture, and Chair of the International Advisory Board for the Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore.
Following the lecture, a small celebration will be held to mark the end of the series.
‘Learning Hospitality from Homer’ will be presented on Thursday 28 September at the Greek Centre (168 Lonsdale St, Melbourne, VIC) at 7.00 pm. Attendance is free.