George Syrimis

George Syrimis grew up on the island of Cyprus. After completing his military service, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Cornell University where he completed his B.Sc. in Education in 1990. He subsequently pursued graduate work at Harvard University where he studied Modern Greek, Classical Greek and Modern Spanish literature. In 2001, he joined the newly established Program in Hellenic Studies at Yale University as the language lector and in 2004 was promoted to associate Program Chair of the same program. He has published articles on the oral tradition, Georgios Vizyenos, Cavafy, Mikis Theodorakis, and Nikos Kazantzakis. In addition to his academic work, he has also developed three electronic projects (Lexis and Ikones) for the instructions of Modern Greek language and literature. He is currently finishing a book on the poetics of C.P. Cavafy’s love poems entitled “”Try to Guard Them, Poet”: Homoeroticism and the Poetics of Opacity in C. P. Cavafy.” His research interests include music and national identity, religion and literature, cultural studies, reception studies, and gender and sexuality. His current research focuses on the literature on Julian the Apostate from the Enlightenment to the present in the works of Ibsen, Cavafy, Merezhkovsky, Kazantzakis, Michel Butor, Gore Vidal and popular literature.

Education History

MA & Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Harvard University
BSc., Education, Cornell University

Research Interests

Music and national identity; religion and literature; cultural studies; reception studies; gender and sexuality.

Publication Highlights

““Try to Guard Them Poet”: Eroticism and the Poetics of Opacity in C. P. Cavafy.” Submitted to Ohio State University Press. Editor Eugene O’Connor.

“Homer in Greece: The Inevitable and Impossible Nostos” (Forthcoming in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Homer, eds Thomas Jenkins and Corinne Pache)

“The History of Tennis: The Critical Reception of Cavafy’s Erotic Poetry.” Voices, vol. 1:1, January 2013.

“Theodorakis Takes on Anagnostakis: Reinventing the Lyric,” in Manolis Anagnostakis: Poetry and Politics, Silence and Agency in Post-War Greece, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press: Madison, p. 43-62.

“Empire, Religious Fanaticism, and Everyman’s Dilemma: Julian the Apostate in Kazantzakis and Cavafy.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 28:1: 79-103

Submission of Cavafy entries, Companion to Twentieth-Century World Poetry. Editor Joan Burton. (forth coming)

“Promiscuous Texts and Abandoned Readings in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy” In New Approaches to Modern Greek Literature, eds. Gregory Nagy and Anna Stavrakopoulou, pp. 99-118 New York: Routledge.