One-day Conference Book Launch Event | Athanasios Psalidas: “Archive’s Discourse”

At this one-day conference being organized to launch the new book by Eleni Kourmantzi titled Athanasios Psalidas: “Archive’s Discourse”, the public will get the chance to discover the work, thought, and action of this educator, intellectual, and author of the Greek Enlightenment. Athanasios Psalidas is a historic figure inextricably connected to the shaping of educational practice, radical thought, and politico-revolutionary action for raising up the “fallen people” that were the Greeks living under Ottoman rule.

The aim of this book is to present readers with a series of unabridged archival documents grouped into apposite thematic sections, namely Private Life, Public Life, Teaching Endeavors, Political Life, Publications – Writings, and Poetics, thus ushering accurate historical facts into the present day. This book presents a characteristic and representative cross-section of Athanasios Psalidas’ multi-faceted pursuits, as brought to light by the manuscripts in his personal archive, which now form part of the Stamatis Krinos Archive held in Athens at the Central Service of the General State Archives of Greece, and by volumes of his published writings housed at the Onassis Library.

This publication builds on two popular exhibitions of Athanasios Psalidas’ books and manuscripts presented in 2019 at the Onassis Library in Athens, and in 2020 at the General State Archives of Greece (Historical Archives – Museum of Epirus) in Ioannina.