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140 years of ACG: The 21st Kimon Friar Lecture

The American College of Greece is honored to present Dr. Gail Holst-Warhaft, a distinguished ethnomusicologist and Adjunct Professor at Cornell University, as the 21st Kimon Friar lecturer. The event will be held on Monday, December 7 at 19:00 in the Upper Level of the John S. Bailey library.

Dr. Gail Holst-Warhaft will talk about the cultural influences of refugees from Asia Minor in a lecture entitled “They Drove Me out of Smyrna: The Asia Minor Refugees and Their Influence on Modern Greek Music

The Lecture

This year’s lecture is of particular importance to our institution, as it will be held in the context of celebrating the 140 years since the College’s foundation in 1875 in Smyrna, Asia Minor, by missionaries from Boston, Massachusetts. Following the destruction of Smyrna, much like an ‘educational refugee,’ the College reestablished itself in Greece in 1923, and has since become interwoven with Greece’s cultural heritage as well, evolving into a significant educational organization.

The lecture will be followed by a live music performance by Haig Yazdjian and his ensemble. Piano: Tatiana Papageorgiou.

The Speaker

During the 70s, while researching a book on Greek music, Dr. Holst-Warhaft also performed as a keyboard-player with some of Greece’s leading composers, including Mikis Theodorakis.

 Among her many publications are: Road to Rembetika (1975), Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature (1992), The Cue for Passion: Grief and its Political Uses (2000) and Water Scarcity, Security and Democracy: A Mediterranean Mosaic (2014).

She has also published translations of Aeschylus, and of Greek poets and prose writers including Iakovos Kambanellis and Alki Zei. Her poems, articles and translations of Greek poetry have appeared in many journals in the US, the U.K., Australia, and Greece. She was Poet Laureate of Tompkins County for 2011 and 2012.