Скачать или смотреть 27th Kimon Friar Lecture on Child Adoption: Greek Myth, Literature and Reality

On April 25, 2023, ACG welcomed classical scholar and linguist Gonda Van Steen as the featured speaker of the 27th Kimon Friar Lecture. A packed audience packed the ACG Events Hall to hear her presentation on “Child Adoption: Greek Myth, Literature and Reality.” Professor Van Steen is the first woman to hold the position of Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature in the Center for Hellenic Studies and the Department of Classics at King’s College London, as well as being an Advisory Board Member of the ACG Institute for Hellenic Culture and the Liberal Arts (IHCLA).
Gonda Van Steen’s research on children’s adoptions from Greece to the USA in the 1950s and 1960s led her to look at texts from ancient and modern Greek literature with fresh eyes. In this lecture, she covered topics from the 5th century BCE Greek tragedy Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and also explored how the modern field of adoption studies and its terminology may help us to reconceptualize the famous story written by Georgios Vizyinos, Τὸ ἁμάρτημα τῆς μητρός μου, My Mother’s Sin.