Sankt Ignatios College in Stockholm and the Retracing Connections Progarmme are co-organizing a one-day workshop on the Poetics of Eastern Christianity. The workshop will take place on February 11, 2026 at Sankt Ignatios College, Nygatan 2, Södertälje.
Retracing Connections begins a new semester with two exiting seminars on storytelling across languages in the medieval and early modern world at Uppsala University.
On September 9, 2025, at 15.15 İpek Hüner (Istanbul) will share her reserach on early Ottoman stories and their translation into French, titled “Talking to Oneself, to God, or to Act: Shifts in Speech Patterns Across Versions and Translations of the Same Story”.
On September 25, 2025, at 15.15, our guest researcher Cameron Cross (Michigan) will trace the itineraries of medieval romances in “Love at the Limits: Exploring Early Persian Romances on the ‘Borders’ with Greek, Arabic, Indic, and Old French Texts”.
Both events take place at Uppsala University’s Engelska Parken, room 9-3042.
This talk focuses on the dialogues and monologues in the versions and translations of an early modern Ottoman story. Two different variants of the version known as the Evḥad Çelebi story and the Yaḥyā Çelebi story, as well as two of the latter’s French translations, will be used for these purposes.
In my talk, I will focus on the protagonists’ dialogues and monologues and how they are utilized as a storytelling tool. My aim is twofold: First, I want to discuss the changing gendered representations among versions as they are made visible by the direct and indirect speeches; second, I want to question the frequent use of inner monologues in Ottoman versions, a feature commonly attributed to the late 19th century and to Western influence.
In this presentation, I will outline the contours of what I have in mind as a book-length project, the second stage of my investigation into the development and function of independent versified love-stories (or “romances”) as they became established in New Persian literature in the early eleventh century CE. Intriguingly, two of the earliest texts in this corpus are translations and adaptations from Greek and Arabic sources – the novel Metiochus and Parthenope, and the tale of ‘Urwa b. Hizam – and in both cases, part of the motivation behind their recasting into Persian seems to be connected with their geo-political context, as texts produced in borderlands trying to make sense of and grapple with Otherness, in both direct and indirect ways. Through a few brief case studies, I hope to consider with you how the concept of the “border” might be a useful heuristic in unpacking the dynamics of entanglement, exchange, tension, and yes, love as well, that are conveyed in this emergent literary tradition.
The Swedish Institute at Athens and the Retracing Connections Research Programme invite you to the fourth Retracing Connections online research dialogue.
Join us with Neil Price (Uppsala), Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson (Uppsala), Laila Kitzler Åhfeldt (Stockholm), Tristan Schmidt (Mainz) and moderator Jenny Wallensten (Athens) for an online discussion on
The Piraeus Lion: Whose Story.
The Dialogue takes place online via Zoom on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. (Athens).
Register here.
The Swedish Institute at Athens and
the Retracing Connections Research Programme,
in collaboration with the Princeton Athens Center for Hellenic Studies,
invite you to the third
Retracing Connections online research dialogue
Join us with
Panagiotis Agapitos (Mainz),
Barbara Graziosi (Princeton),
and David Ricks (London)
and moderator Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala)
for an online discussion on
Greek literature is often defined, interpreted, and appreciated – both within and beyond the academic setting – according to the period in which it was written: Classical, Byzantine, modern, and so on. It is (and often for good reasons) rarely simply ‘Greek’. Labelling literary periods is, of course, intended to simplify hermeneutic processes and analytical practices, and may therefore seem indispensable. However, an increasing number of scholars have begun to note the ideological, political, and potentially ossifying effects of a system that imposes beginnings and breaks, sometimes at the expense of aesthetic and creative dimensions of literature that – especially in a language with so long a history – do not always keep within period boundaries. In this discussion, we will focus on the consequences of such labelling and how we can move beyond it in the study of Greek literature.
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
6.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.
Register here!
Retracing Connections and the Swedish Institute at Athens are presenting an online research dialogue with
Fotini Kondyli (Virginia/Patras)
moderated by Milan Vukašinović (Uppsala)
on the topic of
Layers of Urban History: From Modern to Byzantine Athens through the Athenian Agora Excavations Archives
Can modern urban experiences shape the way we understand Byzantine cities? In this dialogue, we will discuss the impact of modern urban experiences on the interpretation of Byzantine Athens, drawing from archaeological records and contemporary socio-economic phenomena. In doing so I follow two distinct story lines. Through an examination of the Athenian Agora Excavations Archives, Fotini Kondyli discusses how the excavation and recording of the Byzantine layers at the Agora informed narratives about Athens’ post-classical life and urban development. I then turn to contemporary experiences such as Greece’s economic crisis and Athens’ bottom-up urban projects in the crisis aftermath to highlight the relevance of contemporary experiences in enriching our understanding of Byzantine Athens’ spatial configuration and urban dynamics.
The Dialogue takes place online via Zoom on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at 18.00 (Athens).
Register here.