Lecture by Christos Hadjiiossif, Emeritus Professor of History at University of Crete
On Wednesday 14th of December 2022, 8.30 pm, at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (Melissinou and Nikiforou Foka 130, Rethymno), Christos Hadjiiossif, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Crete, with the topic of "Murals and ideology in Asia Minor before 1922".
Christos Hadjiiossif is Emeritus Professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Crete, and has served as director of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies-FORTH. He is the author of Industry in Greece 1830-1940 (Themelio 1993), Synasos. History of a place without history (Cretan University Press 2005), and European integration, Germany and the return of nationalisms (Vivliorama 2017). Professor Hadjiiossif has also edited the collected volumes Venizelism and bourgeois modernization (Cretan University Press 1988) and History of Greece in 20th century (8 volumes, Vivliorama 1999-2009).
100 years after 1922, and despite the small increase of the relevant studies, our understanding of the events has been hardly improved. The deficit of our knowledge is significant particularly as regards the principal victims of the Greek quest in Minor Asia: the local Christians. Studying the murals in the houses of Synasos in central Anatolia perhaps raises more questions than can be answered: Can one proceed from a local/regional case study to totalizing interpretations? Are there ideological reasons for our ignorance of this decorative practice? Why did these murals multiply after the last quarter of the 19th century? Is this artistic production part of a broader Middle East and Balkans tradition, and which are the modern influences in it? What can we learn from these murals about the mentalities and the ideological horizons of the persons that painted them and those that ordered them?