Stavros Niarchos Foundation Lecture: "From empires to nations: transitions in the historical experience of Southeastern Europe"

Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Ph. D., Harvard University, is Professor of Political Science in the University of Athens. He was director of the modern history institute at Greece’s National Research Foundation between 2000 and 2011. His books in English include: The Enlightenment as Social Criticism: Iosipos Moisiodax and Greek Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 1992), Enlightenment Nationalism Orthodoxy (Variorum, 1994), An Orthodox Commonwealth (Ashgate/Variorum, 2007), Eleftherios Venizelos: The Trials of Statesmanship (Edinburgh University Press, 2008), and Enlightenment and Revolution: The Making of Modern Greece (Harvard University Press, 2013). The lecture addresses the historiographical question of the emergence of nations in Southeastern Europe by considering in a long-term perspective the transition from Medieval Christian empires to the monocratic rule of the Ottoman empire in the region in the 15th century and from foreign rule to nation-states in the early nineteenth century. By considering these processes of historical change the lecture sheds light on a number of controversial questions currently under debate in the theory of nationalism. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Lecture in Hellenic Studies was established in 2004 in honor of the Program’s sponsors. The Program had been funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation as a pilot program from 2001 to 2007. In 2007 the Board of Directors of the Foundation endowed the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Hellenic Studies at Yale University, which funds activities of the Hellenic Studies Program at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale. The lecture series brings to the Yale campus distinguished scholars in the humanities and social sciences, public figures, and artists of international reputation.

Speaker: Paschalis Kitromilides, Professor of Political Science, University of Athens