CYA Virtual Lecture Series || July 22, 2020
CYA is delighted to invite you to another CYA Virtual Lecture this upcoming Wednesday, 22 July 2020, at 12 pm (EDT) / 7 pm (Athens).
CYA’s Virtual Lecture Series guest speaker, CYA Advisor Michael Herzfeld, the Ernest E.
Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, will present:
The speaker, who has conducted extensive fieldwork in Greece (mostly on Crete) as well as in Italy and Thailand, will address the importance of knowing village life as a basis for understanding Greek cultural attitudes even in the most sophisticated urban contexts today. He will particularly show how his work in the rather extreme context of a mountain community can clarify some of the attitudes and strengths that are very much part of Greek cultural reactions to today’s crises, including solidarity in the face of austerity and external financial pressures, the fight against corruption and mismanagement, the COVID-19 pandemic, and more generally the erosion that commercialization and globalization have wrought in ordinary social relations.
Facilitating the discussion will be Aimee Placas, professor of Anthropology, who teaches the CYA courses Anthropology of the City: Exploring Modern Athens; The Culture of Modern Greece: The Ethnography of a Society in Transition; Gender and Sexuality in Modern Greek Culture; Solidarity, Social Movements, and the Fight for Justice and Change in Greece: A Service Learning Approach.
Michael Herzfeld
Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences,
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
& Member of the CYA Board of Advisors
Michael Herzfeld was educated at the Universities of Cambridge (B.A. in Archaeology and Anthropology, 1969), Athens (non-degree program in Greek Folklore, 1969-70), Birmingham (M.A., Modern Greek Studies, 1972; D.Litt., 1989); and Oxford (Social Anthropology, D.Phil., 1976).
His D.Litt. was awarded for a series of publications, including books and articles, that have set out his understanding of the processes at work in cultural identity construction in modern Greece. His most recent books include:
Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (new, expanded edition, 2020)
Life among Urban Planners: Practice, Professionalism, and Expertise in the Making of the City. Co-edited with Jennifer Mack.
Research Interests include Social theory, history of Anthropology, social poetics, politics of history; Europe (especially Greece & Italy), and Thailand. His current research activity includes completion of a book and a film about historic conservation and eviction in Bangkok and planned new research on Italian-Chinese interactions in Rome and on the profession of town planning in Italy and elsewhere.
See more here
Aimee Placas
CYA Professor of Anthropology
Aimee Placas holds a PhD in Anthropology from Rice University. She has presented and published on issues related to the anthropology of money, consumer credit, consumption, kinship, and gender and sexuality.
She has recently co-edited the volume Living Under Austerity: Greek Society in Crisis published by Berghahn Press, and has forthcoming pieces related to the impact of financialization processes on Greek households, as well as on ethical and pedagogical issues related to teaching anthropology in a study-abroad context.