2019-20

The subject of the course is the study of religious folklore and, in particular, of the forms of popular religiousness and the traditional religious behavior of the Greeks. The course also examines forms of custom and ritual over time and in their contemporary manifestations. It places particular stress upon customs associated with the life cycle, the yearly festival calendar and on new forms of custom and ritual that define the life of contemporary man.

The course commences with the process whereby the Greek state was constituted during the struggle for Greek independence. It then examines the major developments and changes undergone by the Greek state. It offers an analysis of social, economic and political structures and looks at various aspects of Greek political history.

The roots of modern Greek art, that is, the art that developed in the free Greek state over the 19th and 20th centuries, are to be found in Byzantine painting and the Ionian school of the period before the outbreak of the Greek revolution. After the liberation of Greece, as the result of various composite and mutual influences from Europe, the artistic personality of modern Hellenism was shaped. Many of the works of art of the period express and reproduce the ideological trends, the nature and the transformations in modern Greek society.

The aim of the course is to acquaint students of the department with the main trends in European art from the Renaissance to the artistic currents of the 20th century, that is, with the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococco, Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Surrealism. The course links the visual arts with the historical and social milieu in which they arose and developed. Students are encouraged to reflect and make suggestions as to how art may be validly and effectively employed in the teaching of history.