Hellenic Scholar To Deliver First Macricostas Lecture In New WCSU Series

DANBURY — Dr Speros Vryonis, Jr, recognized as one of the nation’s most eminent scholars of Byzantine and Hellenic studies, will be at Western Connecticut State University to deliver the first talk in a new lecture series funded by a grant from the foundation of Brookfield industrialist and philanthropist Constantine “Deno” Macricostas and his wife Marie.

Dr Vryonis will speak about “The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and The Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul” at 7:30 pm on Thursday, April 6. The lecture will be in Room 125 of the Science Building, at the corner of Osborne Street and James Roach Avenue.

The talk will be free and the public is invited. A reception and book signing will follow.

“The selection of Professor Vryonis by WestConn’s School of Arts and Sciences, and the topic of the 1955 pogroms, brings to light an important and overlooked historical event that continues to have implications to this day,” said Mr Macricostas, whose gift of $1.1 million to the university established the lecture series, an Endowed Chair in Hellenic Studies, a scholarship for students who recently immigrated to the United States, and a business award for regional entrepreneurs.

“As Turkey endeavors to join the European Union, it must come to grips with the darker chapters of its past, so that it can participate as a partner whose values and ideals are compatible with that of all Western societies,” Mr Macricostas continued. “Only in exploring these events within an academic environment of free and unbiased expression, and not through the lens of emotionally charged nationalist rhetoric, is it possible to arrive at an understanding of history that contributes to the creation of a better world today, and a more promising future.”

Dr Vryonis has written extensively about the history and culture of the Greek people from Homer to the present, publishing works on the history of Byzantium and Hellenism and the cultural and religious forces that have for more than two millennia transformed the region stretching from the Balkans to Turkey.

He was a longtime faculty member at the University of California at Los Angeles and in 1985 founded the Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism. He later became founding director of the Alexander Onassis Center for Hellenic Studies at New York University, retiring as the emeritus Onassis professor of Hellenic civilization.

Dr Vryonis is a Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Scholar and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Medieval Academy of America and American Philosophical Society.

He has written and edited numerous books and articles exploring the social and political evolution of the Byzantine empire, as well as the interaction of Hellenic culture with Slavic and Islamic influences in the region. His work The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the 11th through the 15th Century is considered a seminal work in the field

The Constantine S. Macricostas Lecture Series at WestConn will feature speakers on Hellenism, entrepreneurship, and cultures of the world — three fields of interest that mirror Mr Macricostas’s own personal and professional life. An immigrant from Greece in 1954, he founded Photronics in1969, building the company into a multinational provider of photomasks for the semiconductor industry.

For more information, call the WCSU Office of University Relations at 837-8486.