International Cavafy Summer School 2019: Cavafy’s Orientations

A single line can give rise to thousands of different thoughts, and likewise, one could follow thousands of different paths in researching Cavafy’s work. Once more this summer, prominent academics, scholars, and young researchers of Cavafy’s work, all with different methodological paths and at different points on the “journey” of their career, travel from various locations with the Onassis Library and the International Cavafy Summer School as their destination.

This scholarly institution, organized by the Cavafy Archive and the Onassis Foundation, is the first of its kind, devoted entirely to Cavafy and the impact of his work. For the third year in the row, it points the way toward new approaches and alternative understandings of the work of the great Alexandrian.

The inaugural summer school, in July 2017, had “Cavafy in the World” as its theme, while in 2018 the international scholarly group engaged with the theme “Cavafy and Antiquity.” This year, in six days of intensive seminars and workshops collectively titled “Cavafy’s Orient/ations” we will focus on the multiple (geographical, aesthetic, historical, etc.) topographies and cultural dynamics of Cavafy’s work, and will approach the Cavafy phenomenon in its broader geographical and historical range, both during the period of Cavafy’s life in Alexandria and in subsequent decades when his poetry became a major literary event at a global scale.

Come join the conversation. The summer school will be of interest if you are a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, early-career scholar, or if your research concerns fields such as comparative or world literature, Cavafy studies, Modern Greek or classical studies. You will present your work to inspired workshop leaders, and will experience new approaches to Cavafy and his oeuvre.