Open Call | International Cavafy Summer School 2025: Cavafy and Egypt

The International Cavafy Summer School is an annual scholarly initiative of the Cavafy Archive and the Onassis Foundation, focused on Cavafy, his work, and his archive while aiming to explore his poetry’s impact on the world from new cultural and academic perspectives.

Since its inauguration in 2017, the International Cavafy Summer School has aimed to enrich and strengthen participants’ knowledge of Cavafy’s poetry and to encourage future research collaborations between junior and senior scholars from diverse disciplines. Themes explored in previous Summer Schools have been “Cavafy in the World,” “Cavafy and Antiquity,” “Cavafy’s Orient/ations,” “Cavafy Mediated,” “Cavafy across the Disciplines and the Arts,” and “Cavafy, Theater, and Performativity.” The theme for the 2025 Summer School will be “Cavafy and Egypt.”

The 2025 Summer School invites comparative, interdisciplinary proposals both on the poetics and politics of Cavafy in relation to Egypt and on broader intercultural, not least Egyptian-Greek, engagements with and beyond his corpus. As his poetry and prose attest, Cavafy did not only spend most of his life and die in the country of his birth; he was also, among others, of Egypt—an Egyptiote whose positionality and texts open a window onto the complexities of Greek-Egyptian convergence and divergence, as well as cosmopolitan and internationalist Mediterranean legacies. We welcome proposals engaging Cavafy in relation to contemporary Egyptian poets; his reception in Arabic poetry and prose, as well as Arab cinema and the plastic arts; Arabic translations of his texts; comparative studies of the intertextual and intermedial resonances of things Egyptian/Arab in Greek, Egyptiote, and European texts produced by Cavafy’s contemporaries, including varieties of orientalism; Homeric mythology in Cavafy’s poetry in relation to the reimagining of ancient Greek myths in Egyptian/Syro-Lebanese literary culture, particularly inflected by the Nahda (Arab reawakening/renaissance).

Questions for possible consideration include: in what ways have Cavafian Egyptiote tropes been dissimilarly put into play in different literary traditions? What insights into translation and adaptation might we glean from dwelling on Cavafy’s interlingual and intermedial afterlives in the Arab world compared to other cultures? Did Romantic engagements with Hellenism modulate Classical, as well as Hellenistic, ideals within the Egyptian colonial context, and has this influenced the complex dynamics of Cavafy’s reception in Egypt? Taking off from Cavafy’s world, what Greek-Egyptian affinities of Ottoman legacies and imperialism might we unpack? What parallels and contrasts exist between Neohellenism and Neo-Pharaonism, particularly vis-à-vis Eurocentrism? What range of positions on orientalism within the Greek community in Egypt, particularly in Alexandria, might we unpack by focusing on its enmeshment in the country’s colonial economy? How did literary salons, learned societies, print technologies, and educational institutions foster cultural exchange between Europe and the Arab world, particularly Greek-Egyptian relations? How do we read Cavafy’s work in relation to discourses of Mediterraneanism, and in what way does his corpus serve as a springboard for scrutinizing conceptions of museology and heritage in the Mediterranean?

The International Cavafy Summer School 2025 will be led by Hala Halim (New York University) and Martha Vassiliadi (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and will take place in the center of Athens. Among the invited scholars who will hold seminars and act as mentors, offering feedback and responding to participants’ presentations, are Stefano Giannini (Syracuse University), Sabry Hafez (School of Oriental and African Studies, London), Monica Hanna (Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport), Emmanouela Kantzia (University of Thessaly), Yannis Papatheodorou (University of Patras), Ioulia Pipinia (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), and Abdelrehim Youssef (poet and literary translator).

The 2025 Summer School will involve twelve participants who will meet for six days of morning and afternoon sessions (July 7–12). Seminars offered by the invited scholars will be followed by short research presentations given by the participants. All seminar participants are expected to attend every session and actively participate in creative discussions with other attendees, workshop leaders, and guest speakers. This format is designed to encourage engaging and stimulating exchanges throughout the week of the summer school and beyond.

Additional events, including cultural visits and special presentations, will be scheduled during the week. This year the Summer School program will include two performance-lectures on writer and artist Valentine de Saint-Point and poet and feminist Doria Shafik, based on archival research in Greece and Egypt, that will shed light on the cultural landscape in twentieth-century Egypt. The performance-lectures will be presented by Rawya Sadek (multidisciplinary interactive visual artist, writer and translator) and Maria Sideri (artist and researcher).

The working language of the International Cavafy Summer School will be English. Knowledge of Modern Greek is not a requirement, though a measure of familiarity with Cavafy’s work is a prerequisite. This year’s Cavafy Summer School is particularly suitable for participants from a wide range of fields, including, but not limited to, Modern Greek Studies, Comparative Literature, History, Egyptology, Classics, Art History, Print Cultures, Cinema Studies, Translation Studies, and Reception Theory.

Thanks to the generous support of the Onassis Foundation and the Cavafy Archive, the International Cavafy Summer School will cover all room and board expenses for its participants. In addition, all tuition charges and other fees will be waived. Participants may also apply for grants to cover their travel expenses in whole or in part.

Ph.D. candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career scholars working in relevant fields are invited to apply to the 2025 International Cavafy Summer School. In exceptional circumstances, one or two graduate students at the Master’s level may also be accepted on merit of their academic preparation for and interest in the theme of the Summer School.

Applicants are asked to submit:

a) a cover letter that includes a brief outline of their current research and their motivation for participating in the International Summer School (max. 500 words);

b) a description of the particular topic (abstract) they would like to develop in a 20-minute presentation during the International Summer School (max. 500 words);

c) a detailed CV; and

d) contact information of an individual who could provide a reference letter supporting their application.

All documents should be submitted in English.

Participants might be photographed and/or recorded, and portions of their presentations and/or discussions may be made public.

The International Cavafy Summer School application deadline is December 27th, 2024.

Successful applicants will be informed by the end of January 2025 and will be asked to submit a 3,000-word draft of their presentation by May 2nd, 2025.

Failure to submit this draft on time means forfeiting one’s place in the Summer School.

Candidates who wish to apply must create a personal account at the Onassis Directory through the below link, and they can fill in the application and upload the required supporting documents gradually until the submission deadline.