2019-20

The course deals first with the explication of the formation and development over time of the concepts of semiology and semiotics as an interdisciplinary approach employed by the social sciences. The course lays particular stress on the semiotic approach to culture, through an elucidation of the concept of 'text', which, in the approach employed by Geertz, can be taken from written discourse and applied to all components of a culture.

From the 15th to the 18th century, Europe witnessed a series of intellectual, social and economic changes that led to the transformation of old institutions and to the creation of new. The course deals with the factors that contributed to these changes and to the ways in which European social and economic structures and dominant ideologies and beliefs changed.

The aim of the course is to introduce first-year students to the various aspects of folklore, the subject itself, the content of folklore, its aims, its history, the methods it employs and to the basic bibliography. There will be extensive reference to the path followed in Greece by folklore, from the observation and recording of folklore in antiquity, during the Byzantine to the post-Byzantine and modern period. The course will also make reference to how folklore developed in the rest of Europe, America and internationally before and after the Second World War.

The course introduces students to the chief concepts and principles of demography and to the basic techniques employed in the study of demographic phenomena. Particular emphasis is laid upon the links between demography and biological, historical, social and economic phenomena and the cultural features of various human populations.