The 28^TH MGSA SYMPOSIUM

MGSA Symposium 28

The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University hosted the 28^th biennial Modern Greek Studies Association Symposium from October 17-20, 2024. The symposium was returning to the site of its first ever symposium, held at Princeton, on October 30 – November 1, 1969. At that time, the panels were exclusively literary in focus. By the time Princeton next hosted the symposium, thirty years later, in 1999, the symposium had grown to become a multidisciplinary “Open Theme” event.

This year, in 2024, the Princeton Symposium welcomed the largest number of attendees in MGSA symposium history: over 250 registered attendees arrived from points near and far. Our Local Arrangements co-chairs at the Seeger Center, its Executive Director Dimitri H. Gondicas and Senior Lecturer Nikos Panou, meticulously oversaw all planning and organization for the event. In addition to the MGSA’s traditional support of financial aid stipends for participating graduate students, underemployed recent PhD, and adjunct faculty, the Seeger Center also generously contributed funds toward financial support of traveling graduate students. In all, the MGSA and its cosponsors was pleased to be able to extend financial support to 67 speakers from north America and beyond.

The Program Committee was led by Eugenia Georges and Tom Papademetriou. The conference program featured 45 academic panels; 4 special sessions; a mixer for graduate students in our field. At the conference venue, the organizers hosted a book exhibit. And, for the first time, the MGSA Graduate Studies Committee also hosted a Graduate Mentoring session in the stately surroundings of the Chancellor Green Rotunda. At an equally stately venue, the Richardson Auditorium, our participants and members of the Princeton community enjoyed a memorable concert performance by the singer, Alkyone. 

The symposium came at a poignant moment for reflection and commemoration in modern Greek studies, fifty years since two interlinked events that transformed the modern Greek world—the attempted coup and war in Cyprus that brought its enduring division, and the restoration of democracy after the fall of the dictatorship in Greece. Mindful of this conjuncture, the keynote lecture featuring Professor Elizabeth A. Davis (Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University) elaborated “On the Uses and Abuses of a History of Conflict: Context and Recursion in Cyprus, 2024.”

Prize Announcements

The Thursday opening night of the Symposium saw the MGSA presenting the awards to the winners of its various prize competitions. The announcements are at the following links:

• Keeley Book Prize
• Iatrides Dissertation Prize
• Karagiannaki Edited Volume Prize
• Constantinides Translation Prize
• Papacosma Essay Prize

University of Illinois Chicago will host the 2026 MGSA Symposium.