Keynotes

Nazile Kalaycı (Hacettepe University, Turkey)

Speech: My Wounds Precede Me: A Feminist Reading upon Greek Mythology

Prof. Dr. Nazile Kalaycı is a faculty member of the Department of Philosophy in Hacettepe University. In her master thesis (H.U. 2001), she focused on Nietzsche’s thoughts on tragic culture and in her phD dissertation (H.U. 2007) she investigated the Aristotelian, Marxian and Habermasian notions of publicity with an eye to relate them with current problems. Kalaycı publishes her works in Turkish journals such as Felsefe Logos, Cogito, e-skop, Doğu Batı and Varlık. She also publishes translations of German and Ancient Greek texts. Kalaycı still teaches in Hacettepe University and give the courses of Ancient Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, Political Philosophy and Feminism. In her recent studies, she has been tracing signs of the archaic embedded in the present by examining classical tragedies within the context of current issues.

Selected works:

1. Nazile Kalaycı, “Klasik Tragedyalarda Koro’nun Sesi: Adalet”, Mit ve Masallar, Doğu Batı Düşünce Dergisi, sayı 71, Doğu Batı Yayınları, Ankara, 2014-15, ss. 257-275.
2. “Die Öffentlichkeitsfunktion des Chors in der antiken Tragödie”, Uluslararası Felsefe Kongresi, Atina, Ağustos, 2014.
3. Nazile Kalaycı, “Nietzsche’de Kültürün Gelişmesi Bakımından Mitosların İşlevi” Bibliotech, Felsefe-Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, Ankara, Sayı 6, Ekim 2008, ss. 21-24.

Slobodan Dan Paich (Artship Foundation, San Francisco, ABD)

Speech: Mythology As Need Psychological And Communal Origins Of Mythic Transmissions

Slobodan Dan Paich is the director and principal researcher of Artship Foundation at San Francisco, the USA and visiting professor in Anthropology-Cultural Studies Section at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Timisoara, Romania. He has delivered numerous papers at international conferences as keynote speaker and presenter based on his courses, lectures and research since 1969, which address tangible and intangible heritage, comparative cultural studies and migration of peoples, craft technics and ideas.

The courses he initiated in 1969 at the college and university level broadened the scope of art history into the History of Art and Ideas. These courses included geographies larger than the European cultural sphere and an interdisciplinary, across time curriculum was developed that included ancient and indigenous people as differently cultured, ingénues and refined rather than primitive.

Slobodan Dan Paich was born in Yugoslavia after the Second World War. He lived in England from 1967 to 1985. In London S. D. Paich taught the History of Art and Ideas, Architectural Design, Design Theory and Art Studio from 1969 to1985. From1985 to1992, he taught at the University of California at Berkeley. With colleagues and concern citizens he founded the Artship Foundation in 1992, and has been its Executive and Programmatic Director and Principal Comparative Cultural Studies Researcher ever since. He also served as a board member of the Society of Founders of the International Peace University in Europe and Asia from 1996 to 2017. From 1996 to 2002 he lectured in Berlin and Vienna and chaired the Committee on Arts and Culture.

Slobodan Dan Paich is Comparative Culturesand Interdisciplinarycurriculum designer and consultant.

Marguerite Johnson (The University of Newcastle, Australia) 

Speech: Myths of Greece in Australian Colonial Art

Marguerite Johnson is Professor of Classics at The University of Newcastle, New South Wales. She is an interdisciplinary cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, and a comparative cultural analyst. Her methodology privileges literary-informed cultural paradigms, underpinned by the theoretical praxes of both gender and post-colonial theories.

Her research areas are: Classical Reception Studies, particularly Australasian appropriations of ancient Greece and Rome, including colonial discourse; historical studies in sexualities, gender, and the body; and the Platonic ‘myth’ voice.

Selected works:

1. Johnson, M., & Benitez, R. (2016). Chinese Translation of ‘Storytelling and Authority: Critical Poetics in Plato’s Symposium.’ In R. Benitez, & K. Wang (Eds.), Reflections on Plato’s Poetics Essays from Beijing. Beijing: Academic Printing and Publishing.
2. Johnson, M. (2012). ‘The role of Eros in improving the pupil, or what Socrates learned from Sappho.’ In M. Johnson, & H. Tarrant (Eds.), Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator. London: Bristol Classical Press.
3. Johnson, M., & Ryan, T. J. (2005). Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature: A sourcebook. London: Routledge.

Yuri Berezkin (Head of American Department of Museum of Anthropology & Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of Russian Academy of Sciences, European University, Russia)

Speech: Folklore Database and Prehistory: Areal Trends of Distribution of Motifs and their Interpretation

Yuri Berezkin is head of American department of Museum of Anthropology & Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of Russian Academy of Sciences (since 2003) and professor of European University at Saint Petersburg (since 1997), Doctor of Science in History. He graduated Leningrad State University (1970, diploma with distinction in archaeology) and was a fellow of the Kunstkamera Museum (1973-1986) and the Institute of Archaeology/Institute for the History of Material Culture (1987-2002), having research interests in Ancient Peruvian iconography, archaeology of Southern Turkmenistan (Neolithic – Bronze Age) and study of the early complex societies. Since the 90-ies he is engaged into statistical processing of global distribution of folklore and mythological motifs and application of the results to the reconstruction of prehistoric migrations and cultural interaction. Yuri Berezkin is creator of The Electronic Analytical Catalogue of Folklore-Mythological Motifs: Thematic Classification and Areal Distribution (http://www.ruthenia.ru/folklore/berezkin, updated every December, in Russian, since 2017 with Evgeny Duvakin) and its online version (http://mapsofmyths.com, English descriptions of motifs and maps of their distribution. Yuri Berezkin is the author of more than 300 papers, his six Russian monographs on world mythology and folklore have been published since 2007.

Selected works:

1. “Peopling of the New World in light of the data on distribution of folklore motifs” Maths Meets Myths: Quantitative Approaches to Ancient Narratives. Ralph Kenna, Máirín Mac Carron, and Pádraig Mac Carron, eds.Springer Verlag, 2016. Pp. 71-89.
2. “Stratigraphy of cultural interaction in Eurasia based on computing of folklore motifs”. Trames. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 2016, 20(3): 217-227.
3. “Motifs of Soqotri Narratives: Towards a Comparative-Typological Analysis”. Aula Orientalis, 2016, 34(2): 201-243. (with D. Cherkashin, L. Kogan & V. Naumkin)

Ali Utku (Atatürk University, Turkey)

Speech: Homer and Mythopoetic Thinking before Philosophy

Ali Utku is a faculty member at Atatürk University Faculty of Literature Department of Philosophy. His areas of study are contemporary western philosophy and Turkish thought after the Reform movement. He is the chief editor of Çizgi Publishing in which he edited a series called “Studies in Ottoman Philosophy”. Some of the books which are published within this series are Ziya Gökalp, Philosophy Lectures (2006); Ali Suavi, Mehmed Rıfat of Monastery, Kebetos Pinaks: The Picture of Human Life, (2011); Abdullah Cevdet, Science (Fünûn) and Philosophy andSânihâsof Philosophy (2009); Ahmed Midhat, Schopenhauer’s New Wisdom(2013); Maârif-i Umûmiye Nezâreti Istılâhât-ı İlmiye Encümeni, Kâmûs-ı Felsefe Istılâhâtı Mecmûası (2014).

Selected works:

1. Michael Hard, Gilles Deleuze: Felsefede Bir Çıraklık, çev. Ali Utku, (Birey Yayınları, İstanbul 2002).
2. Ali Utku (Derleyen), Çalınan Poe: Lacan ve Derrida, Psikanalitik Devekuşu Diyalektiği, (Birey Yayınları, İstanbul, 2005).
3. Jacques Derrida, Nietzschelerin Şöleni, çev. Ali Utku, (Otonom Yayınları, İstanbul, 2008)

Panos Eliopoulos (University of Ioannina, Greece)

Speech: Sophocles’ Ajax as a Political Hero: Nobility, Power and Political Brutality

Dr. Panos Eliopoulos teaches at the Department of Philosophy, Education and Psychology, at the University of Ioannina, in Greece, and is also doing his postdoctoral research in the Complutense University of Madrid. His main research interests are: Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Existentialism, Moral and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Education, Comparative Philosophy. In the past he taught as a Lecturer in the University of Peloponnese, in the University of Athens and in the Higher School of Technological and Pedagogical Education. His articles and reviews have been published in several Greek and foreign philosophy journals or have been included in international collective volumes. Dr. Eliopoulos has served as the Vice President of ISUD (International Society for Universal Dialogue) and also as the Vice President in the Scientific Council of the Academy of Institutions and Cultures. He has been the chief-editor of the Greek philosophical Journals Celestia, and of Papyri and Delti. He is currently a reviewer and member of the editorial board of the American Journals International Journal of Decision Ethics, Philosophy Study, and Journal of Research on Contemporary Society, also for the Ukrainian Philosophy and Cosmology, Philosophy and Education as well as a reviewer in a plethora of international scientific publications. He is currently completing a monograph on the political philosophy of the Stoics (in Greek) and the edition and translation of essays on the Epicurean philosophy.

Selected works:

1. “The loss of life in the existentialist outlook of Miguel de Unamuno and in the Ancient Greek tragedy”. In SKEPSIS. XIX/ i-ii2008, pp. 172-182.
2. “The Transcendence of Fate in Plato and in the Stoic Seneca”. In the International Journal PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY, vol. 34, issue 1-2, Winter-Spring 2011, pp. 91-100.
3. “Socrates and Jainism: The way of the soul to knowledge”. In Knowledge, Morality and Spirituality,Proceedings of the Conference of the Society for Indian Philosophy and Religion and the Institute of Cross Cultural Studies, Kolkata- India, 5-7 January 2016 (under publication).

Nevzat Can (Atatürk University, Turkey)

Speech: The Nature of Mythos as a Form (Means) of Expression and its Relation to Modernity

Nevzat Can is a graduate of Ankara University, Faculty of Languages History and Geography. He began his professional career at Atatürk University, Faculty of Literature, Department of Philosophy as a Research Assistant. After receiving his MA and PhD degrees from the same institution Can has been nominated as an associated professor in the field of political philosophy. In 2011 Nevzat Can became a professor and soon after he was nominated as the Dean of the Faculty of Literature at Atatürk University, and he is the current head of the Department of Philosophy. His research areas are Epistemology, Ethics, Political Philosophy and Islamic Philosophy.

Selected works:

1. Problems of Political Philosophy
2. Free Individual Restricted State
3. The Philosophy of Libertarian Education

Roy Jreijiry (Lebanese University, Lebanon)

Speech: Religious Myths at the Crossroads of Lebanese Public Spheres

PhD in Information and Communication Sciences, Roy Jreijiry teaches at the Lebanese University – faculty of information in Beirut. A part of his work focuses on the visibility of the religious register in the Lebanese public space and sheds the light on its impact on both political (political discourse, citizenship and national identity) and media spheres (TV programs contents, gender representations).

Selected works:

1. -(In French) Jreijiry, R. (2017), “The Religious Image in Lebanese Public Space”, a research paper presented at the international symposium organized by the University of Geneva: “What do images in Public Space Do?”, Geneva, January 18-20.
2. -(In French) Jreijiry, R. (2016), “The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism in the Middle East: The Lebanese State Under the Sway of Religious Groups”, Religiologiques, Religon, Law and State: Interference, Intersection and interface, No. 34, Autumn, p. 269-294.http://www.religiologiques.uqam.ca/no34/34_269-294_Jreijiry.pdf.
3. -(In Arabic) Jreijiry, R. (2015), “Media Coverage for Religious Issues in Social Talk Show Programs (November 2014-January 2015)”, Maharat Foundation, September. http://www.maharat-news.com/Temp/Attachments/cfa8f212-6720-44cf-a396-81002e5a4791.pdf.

Meryem Bulut (Ankara University, Turkey)

Speech: The Adventure of the Transition to Settled Life in the Narratives of Enkidu, Gilgamesh and Cain

She teaches in Ankara University, Department of Anthropology. Among the courses she lectures are Civic Anthropology, Anthropology of Jurisprudence, Rural Studies, Cultural Structure of Turkey, Mythology and Crime & Migration. In her master thesis (A. U. 2002), she made a research on the relation between culture and psychological despair of divorced women. In her phD dissertation (A.U. 2008), she conducted a field research on crime victim children’s social and anthropological aspects.

She still conducts a project on birth, death and marriage ceremonies, which started in 2016 in the villages of Dikili. Her works are published in the journals of Folklor/Edebiyat, International Journal on Humanities, Anthropology, Turkish Studies and International Journal of Advanced Research.

Selected works:

1. BULUT, M. (2017).  Geçiş Ritüellerinden Doğum: Sağaltım Yolları.  Turkish Studies. Doi Number: 10.7827/TurkishStudies.12019. Volume 12/21, p. 121-132
2. BULUT,M. (2016). Reflections Of New Age Beliefs into Human Behaviors. International Journal of Advanced Research (IJAR). Article DOI:10.21474/IJAR01/2061.
3. BULUT, M. (2014). Post Natal Practices in Kavak County and Its Villages Mother and Baby Oriented Treatment and Protection Ways. International Journal of Human Sciences. 11(2), 420-430. DOİ: 10.14687/ijhs.v11i2.2977.