“How to Think About the Past”

Lecture by

Katherine Elizabeth Fleming

President and CEO, J. Paul Getty Trust
and Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization,
Department of History, New York University (NYU)

March 2, 2024

4:00 p.m.

UCLA Fowler Museum, Lenart Auditorium
Reception to follow

Event is free but advanced registration is requested

Introductory remarks by The Honorable Christina Valassopoulou, Consul General of Greece in Los Angeles.

This lecture will not be livestreamed or recorded.

In his poem “O gyrismos tou xenitimenou” (“The Return of the Exile”), Giorgos Seferis famously wrote that the protagonist’s nostalgia for Greece had created a “non-existent country.”

We access the past in various ways, none of them totally reliable: memory, nostalgia, history — carry with them different implications and different defects. This talk will consider various ways in which these different pathways to the past connect to modern Greek history, literature, and nationalism. Drawing on examples from contemporary oral history and from Greek-Jewish memoirs, it will consider the various ways in which the past is always with us — and always changing.

Katherine Elizabeth Fleming is President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization in the Department of History at New York University (NYU), where she served as Provost from 2016 to 2022. A historian of Modern Greece and the Mediterranean, her interests range from religious identity to historical memory to oral history. In Greece she is the co-director of the large-scale public history project ISTORIMA.ORG, which she co-founded with the journalist Sofia Papaioannou with a significant grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.  From 2012-2016 she was President of the Board of the University of Piraeus in Greece. She currently serves as a political appointee to the administrative board of the University of Paris system in France. 

This event is being co-sponsored by the LMU Basil P. Caloyeras Center for Modern Greek Studies and held under the auspices of the Consulate General of Greece in Los Angeles. This program is made possible thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

Parking Information:

Parking for Royce Hall is available in Parking Structure 5 located at: 302 Charles E Young Dr N, Westwood, Los Angeles, CA 90095. Parking Structure 5  is accessible from Royce Drive, south of Sunset Boulevard, and west of Hilgard Ave. (in the northeast section of the campus).

To view the walking map from Parking Structure 5 to the Fowler Museum, click here.

No parking attendants will be on-site at the parking structure, and Pay-By-Space/Visitor Parking is extremely limited in this lot, so we highly encourage you to purchase a parking permit in advance:

• • To save time, you may purchase your parking permit for $15 in advance using Bruin ePermit: https://bruinepermit.t2hosted.com/pnw2/selectevent.aspx. Select “UCLA Campus Event,” then “Katherine Fleming Lecture” with the advanced parking permit, you can park anywhere in Parking Structure 5 EXCEPT in the Pay-by-Space section. For instructions on how to use this portal, please click here.
  • To purchase a permit when you arrive at Parking Structure 5, please park ONLY in the Pay-By-Space/Visitor Parking area on the rooftop of this structure, and proceed to the Self-Service Pay Station machine to pay by credit card (the parking on this level is very limited).
  • Guest drop/Ride-share drop off is directly behind the Museum: 305 Royce Drive, directly off Sunset Blvd.
  • Accessible parking: If you have accessibility needs, you may park in the Pay-By-Space/Visitor Parking area on the rooftop (level 5) of this structure, and proceed to the Self-Service Pay Station machine to pay by credit card.  Please visit our Campus Accessibility Map to view related information. Upon parking, proceed to the elevators behind Korn Convocation Hall to reach the first floor. Once you exit, you will find the Fowler Museum to your left.

For inquiries, please contact hellenic@humnet.ucla.edu