Who would have thought that having all this unexpected spare time would be this hard. Posed to me as a hypothetical in the midst of a busy work week, the prospect of an indefinite number of days working from home with all social / professional obligations cancelled would have seemed like heaven. Think of all the writing I could get done. All those ideas I would finally get to hammer out, in scripts, op-eds, articles, pitches etc. Turns out that as a lived experience, an indefinite amount of unstructured time is pretty unnerving. I’ll admit that I’ve never had a harder time actually doing something.
Read MoreHow to raise awareness of the most recent refugee crisis in the Mediterranean in a way that does not spectacularize human suffering? Beginning with Bouchra Khalili's The Mapping Journey Project, this essay addresses how the present crisis has manifested as image and has made its way, across a variety of methodological and ethical approaches, into works of art.
Read MoreIn her latest article titled “Archive Fever: Literature, Illegibility and Historical Method,” published in the February 2020 issue of the American Historical Review, Argyro Nicolaou explores the allure of illegibility in the archive. She adapts methods from literary analysis and visual art in order to decipher an inscrutable fragment from the archive of Greek Egyptian novelist Stratis Tsirkas (1911–1980): a hastily written something on a 1929 film flyer advertising the screening of two Hollywood movies at the Ciné de Paris theater in Cairo. In her attempt to render the text legible, Nicolaou reconstructs the moment of the archival fragment’s production by developing a technique called “reverse calligraphy.” This sensory engagement with the archive’s materiality leads to a series of illuminations both with regard to Tsirkas’s biography and with regard to the role of creativity in historical inquiry.
Read the article here: https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/125/1/112/5721703
Read MoreOne of the watershed innovations of postmodern dance was the liberation of movement from its symbolic and narrative functions in choreography and performance. Freed also from the attendant expectation of having to be ‘ideal,’ the dancing body began giving shape to the invisible forces of its own production. Through their movements, dancers began tracing the formal limitations of scores, and started borrowing basic actions—like walking—from everyday life. In the process, this new movement opened up the art of dance to every kind of body. Movement became an ‘index’(1); a measure of something instead of an attempt at the thing itself, a way of knowing outside the limits of representation and mimesis.
“New Movement,” a group show curated by Helen Singh-Miller at The Cost Annex in Boston on June 7th 2019, explored ways in which contemporary art is building on this legacy of movement. The show featured the works of ten artists either living in or connected to the Boston area, showing movement in its collective, individual, appropriated, accepted, and even marginalized variations. Brought together through Singh-Miller’s perceptive curation, these works shed light on the power of movement to make us imagine, see, and embody the world otherwise.
http://bostonartreview.com/reviews/new-movement-helen-singh-miller-argyro-nicolaou-boston/
Read MoreFor literature scholar and filmmaker Argyro Nicolaou, PhD ’18, stories, images, and film have the power to unlock new understandings of migration. Through her filmmaking efforts and literary studies in comparative literature, which include her doctoral dissertation, she leverages these media to illuminate Europe’s relationship with the Mediterranean and focus on the narrative dimensions of forced displacement.
Read the full article here: https://gsas.harvard.edu/news/stories/history-lessons
Read MoreI spoke to City Free Press about my dissertation project; migration; and the arts and humanities.
Read MoreMy essay on European refugees in the Middle East during World War II won one of Harvard's oldest and most prestigious writing awards.
Read MoreΠαρόλο που συχνά έχουμε την εντύπωση πως μπορούμε να ζούμε τη ζωή μας χωρίς να μας επηρεάζει, το Κυπριακό πρόβλημα δεν αφήνει ούτε και μία πτυχή της ύπαρξής μας ανέγγιχτη. Η περίπτωση των Κυπρίων που γεννήθηκαν μετά τα γεγονότα του 1974, όταν η διαίρεση του νησιού πήρε την τελική μορφή που έχει σήμερα, αντικατοπτρίζει αυτό το παράδοξο. Για τις μετα—1974 γενεές, το Κυπριακό πρόβλημα είναι συνάμα φάντασμα και πραγματικότητα.
Read MoreDespite the growing impression that we can get on with our lives without being affected by it, the Cyprus problem leaves no aspect of our existence untouched. The case of those born on Cyprus after the events of 1974, when the division of the island took the shape it currently continues to hold, illustrates the paradox.
Read MoreIn my second post for the 'Things I Used to Think Were Weird BUT...' series, how a hate relationship with water bottles turned into unconditional love.
Read MoreThere are certain kinds of behavior you pick up despite yourself. In this post, how this writer's disdain for thrifty sidewalk acquisitions turned into a cherished habit.
Read MoreCypriots were around, but how did they get there?
Read MoreHelen of Troy meets Menelaus in Egypt. From Euripides' Helen .
Read MoreA post I wrote for In The Same Boat, a Harvard field study on migration in Morocco.
Read MorePhotos from Marrakech, January 2016.
Read MorePhotos from Casablanca, Morocco. January 2016.
Read MoreEnvironmental groups protest the development of the Akamas peninsula outside the presidential palace in Nicosia, Cyprus. JOIN THE CAUSE! SAVE AKAMAS!
Read MoreA very first observation. Part of an upcoming larger series of short videos.
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