A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Evaporating Borders

Evaporating Borders

The Njegos Foundation for Serbian Language and Culture presents EVAPORATING BORDERS a film by Iva Radivojević.

Friday, September 25, 2015, 6:00pm, Marshall D. Shulman Seminar Room (1219 IAB, 420 West 118th St.)

Originally from Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists except in books and films, Iva Radivojević’s family immigrated to Cyprus to escape political unrest. Raised in Cyprus, she is approaching the film as a personal exploration of what it means to have a hybrid existence in which one is always searching for an identity.

The title “Evaporating Borders” corresponds to the idea that the erosion of boundaries and borders (both physical and metaphoric) defamiliarize the narratives of selfhood through which identities take shape and reproduce themselves. The flow of populations, commodities and information is associated with loss of traditions, memories and histories. This poses a threat to national identity and translates to discrimination, prejudice, and intolerance. What is apparent in Cyprus is emblematic of hierarchical racial structures around the world, looking to cultures and peoples outside Western borders from a position of superiority.

While the film examines what it means to disassociate from these beliefs, it also explores the principles of inequality precipitated by certain cultures over others, classes against other classes, the concept of motherland, and an essentialized conception of identity. Though the film is told from the director’s personal experience and point-of-view, it is less about her own story than an exploration of the mentioned themes.

The director of the film will join us for the Q&A section.

This event is co-sponsored by the Program of Hellenic Studies at Columbia.

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Stella Jatras

Stella Louis Jatras

Stella Louis Jatras (nee Katsetos) from Camp Hill, PA, was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, as the fourth and youngest daughter of Louis (Leonidas) and Marina Katsetos, originally of Sparta, Greece, and later of Harrisburg and Carlisle.

Stella was quite literally a daughter of Sparta - and her father's name was Leonidas, no less. As Julia Gorin noted, she was Sparta, truly worthy of that heroic heritage. Axia!

In addition to the U.S. Department of State, her professional work included service with the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA and the Veterans Administration.

In 1953, she married George Jatras, also the offspring of Greek immigrant parents, and began a long and varied life as the wife of a career U.S. Air Force Officer.

As a career military officer's wife, Stella traveled widely and lived in several foreign countries where she not only learned about other cultures but became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs and world politics. She lived in Moscow for two years, where she worked in the Political Section of the U.S. Embassy. She also lived in Germany, Greece, and Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty countries.

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Publishing

The Church at Prayer

The Church at Prayer

by Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra

Publisher’s note

Many readers of the addresses of Elder Aimilianos, which have been published in the five-volume series, rchimandrite Aimilianos, Spiritual Instructions and Discourses (Ormylia, 1998-2003), have frequently expressed the wish for an abridged and more accessible form of his teaching. In response, we are happy to inaugurate a new series of publications incorporating key texts from the above-mentioned collection. Other considerations have also contributed o this new project, such as the selection of specific texts which address important, contemporary questions; the need for a smaller, more reader-friendly publication format; and the necessity for editing certain passages in need of clarification, without however altering their basic meaning.

Above all, the works collected in this volume reflect the importance which the Elder consistently attached to prayer, spirituality, community life, worship, and liturgy. Thus the experientially based works "On Prayer", and "The Prayer of the Holy Mountain", which deal primarily with the Prayer of the Heart, appear first, followed by the summary addresses on "The Divine Liturgy", and "Our Church Attendance". These are in turn followed by the more socially oriented discourses on "Our Relations with Our Neighbor", and "Marriage: The Great Sacrament". Finally, the present volume closes with the sermons on "Spiritual Reading" and "The Spiritual Life", which in a simple and yet compelling manner set forth the conditions for "ascending to heaven on the wings of the Spirit".

It is our hope that The Church at Prayer will meet the purpose for which it is issued and will serve as a ready aid and support for those who desire God and eternal life in Him.

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