CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – One of the nation’s leading scholars of modern Greek will be on the University of Illinois campus April 22 to present a free lecture at 7 p.m. in the Levis Faculty Center.
Vassilis Lambropoulos, the C.P. Cavafy Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, will discuss “Greek American Accents.”
According to Lambropoulos, retaining a “foreign accent” when speaking English is not necessarily considered to a negative trait today. Instead, he says, “we have come to see accents as performative elements that enrich the orchestra of human communication by adding inexhaustible varieties of timbre and rhythm.”
U. of I. linguistics professor Marina Terkourafi and classics professor Angeliki Tzanetou are coordinating an ongoing, recently begun initiative to cultivate a greater awareness and knowledge of contemporary Greek language and culture on the U. of I. campus. With support from the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and the Committee for Modern Greek Studies, Terkourafi and Tzanetou have been leading efforts to offer a language option that satisfies the campus general education requirements.
Terkourafi described modern Greek as “the living language used to communicate in Greece and Cyprus today.”
“It is the everyday spoken language, the language literature is written in, used in business and read on the Internet,” she said. “It represents the current stage that the Greek language has reached after 4,000 years of history.”
Greek culture, she noted, is ubiquitous and virtually inescapable in modern Western civilization.
“Look around – at the campus buildings and even the column on the Illinois ‘I’ sign (logo).”
Terkourafi said the Committee for Modern Greek Studies has been doing outreach work locally and with Chicago’s large Greek community for the past year to promote efforts to offer language and culture courses Illinois. She added that the Hellenic Students’ Association has played a vital role in those efforts, especially in terms of connecting the committee with Greek and Greek-heritage faculty members.
Lambropoulos’ talk – sponsored by the committee and by the Office of the Provost, SLCL, departments of linguistics and of the classics and the European Union Center -represents the second major public event brought to campus by the committee this year. Last fall, members organized a documentary-film screening at Spurlock Museum.
On April 24, experts including College of Education Dean Mary Kalantzis and political science professor Robert Pahre will discuss “Greece in the 21st Century: Trends and Challenges” at the U. of I.’s Illini Center in Chicago to continue outreach efforts there.
Terkourafi said the debut campus course in elementary modern Greek will be offered this summer through the Intensive Foreign Language Instruction program. The regular elementary course will be offered for the first time this fall, with a continuing second-level course available in spring 2010.
Terkourafi said the committee is working toward establishing a cohesive, comprehensive program with courses in modern Greek history, politics and culture. While the language will at first be taught by graduate teaching assistant Nikolaos Vergis, a six-year plan calls for establishing continuity by adding a full-time faculty member.
