Pontus the Opera | Memorial Seminar

with Dean Kalimniou

“Pontus the Opera.” While Pontus is commonly portrayed as an isolated region with its own idiosyncratic culture, this was not always so. In this lecture, Dean Kalimniou will examine how Pontus captured the western imagination and served as the inspiration for the composition of opera and classical music. In this was the stereotype of Pontus as the other is both augmented and confounded leading to a discussion about externally and internally imposed Orientalism and how this affects identity formation.

Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day

May 19 marks the official Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day, commemorating the tragic events of the systematic persecution and mass killing of Greeks residing along the Black Sea coast during World War I and the subsequent Greco-Turkish War. Recognized by the Greek state in 1994, this genocide signifies the Ottoman Turks’ ruthless campaign to eradicate or forcibly remove the indigenous Christian communities of Anatolia, among them the Pontic Greeks.

• ENTRY: Free