PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies

Library Research Grants
Academic Year 2002-2003

Name Project Title

HIRST, Anthony
Bio, Project

 

Cavafy Archive Research Cavafy: A New Canon

KASSIANOU, Nina
Bio, Project

 

Crawshaw Archive Research Photographic Depiction as Testimony of the Historical Period 1940-1950 in Greece

STEFANIDOU, Anastasia
astefan@princeton.edu
Bio, Project

Greek American Literary Production Ethnic and Diaspora Poetry of Greek America


Anthony Hirst
is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College in London (2000-2003). He has also been awarded the Post-doctoral Research Fellowship in Byzantine and Modern Greek Literature in the Institute of Byzantine Studies at Queen's University in Belfast (2000-2002). He took his B.A. in theology and in English at the University of Cambridge in 1966. In 1994, he took an M.A. in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College from where he earned a Ph.D. in Modern Greek Literature in 1999. He has won various scholarships, including the Greek Government Scholarship and the British Academy Postgraduate Scholarship. His current projects include the completion of a book on Cavafy's Byzantine poems and editing a volume of conference papers on Alexandria. Recently published books include The Appropriation of Biblical and Liturgical Language in the Poetry of Palamas, Sikelianos, and Elytis and Alexandria, Real and Imagined (ed. Hirst and Michael Silk).

The Alexandrian Greek poet, C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933), is widely regarded as the most important of modern Greek poets. He is certainly the most widely translated, and is indeed one of the most translated of all twentieth-century poets. His work has influenced poets writing in many languages, and his reputation as a poet of world standing is now firmly established. Despite this, some of the resources for scholarship which one would expect to have in the case of such a major poet are still lacking, almost seventy years after Cavafy's death. It is only since 1994 that all of the poetry Cavafy himself left unpublished has been in the public domain. Many of the poet's notes and most of the correspondence in the Cavafy Archive remain unpublished; there is no comprehensive biography; and there is no critical edition, even of the most important group of his poems, the 154 'acknowledged' poems of the 'Canon.' There is a need for a new edition and the Princeton corpus of Cavafy collections provides an excellent basis for initiating research.


Nina Kassianou is a graduate of Pharmaceutical School in Pavia, Italy, and a photography critic for the Greek newspaper, To Vima. Currently, she is working towards a Ph.D. at Panteion University, Athens, Greece. Her publications include over 40 articles and criticism in To Vima.

Nina Kassianou will conduct research on the Nancy Crawshaw papers with special attention paid to her photographs and her writing covering the period of 1939-1974. Princeton has relevant photographic and document archives. Researching for her dissertation, Photographic depiction as testimony of the historical period 1940-1950 in Greece, Kassianou aims to collect photographic material in order to support the idea of how photography can turn into a vivid narrative medium, recording as well as interpreting history. Her interest focuses on how social and historical events are presented through photography as well as what additional information can be drawn through careful investigation and reading of Princeton's photographic archives material.


Anastasia Stefanidou earned a Ph.D. in American Literature and Culture from Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece, with a dissertation entitled Ethnic and Diaspora Poets of Greek America. A B.A. in English was granted to her from the same University with honors in 1990. Scholarships she held include a Fulbright Scholarship in 1991 and yearly scholarships for academic excellence from the National Scholarship Foundation of Greece (1986-1990). She has a paper entitled "Creating a 'Third Home' in Diaspora: Reading Meena Alexander and Miranda Panaretou Cambanis" forthcoming in Literature on the Move: Comparing Diasporic Ethnicities in Europe and the Americas.

Anastasia Stefanidou will investigate poetry by early ethnic and diaspora writers of Greek America by researching various library collections including the archives of Andonis Decavalles, Kimon Friar, Edmund Keeley, and Mario Vitti. Research at Princeton University could contribute to the expansion of parts of her dissertation not only by allowing the examination of materials not available in Greece and which are related to the work and reception of the first Greek American poets, but it would also aid in revising a chapter of her dissertation on Decavalle's poetry. The exchange of ideas between the literary figures of the two countries could illustrate the writers' respective concerns as well as the different ways that they perceived of Greek American literary production.


Library Fellows - 2001-2002