The Symposium

Trip Start Sep 07, 2008
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Trip End Dec 09, 2008


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Flag of Greece  , Attica,
Wednesday, December 3, 2008

So you're on a long, narrow cushioned ledge. You're stretched out on the ledge on your left side, propped up by your left elbow. With your right hand, you grab the food coming round on platters, and drink your wine. You spend hours conversing with your friends, who are similarly reclined around the room. Sometimes the dialogue gets deep and heated, and sometimes it just gets drunken and debauched. You are at an ancient Greek sumposion, or as it was later called in Roman times, symposium.

The last assignment of the term in both persuasion and rhetorical criticism classes was for the students to honor the spirit of dialogue at the Greek symposium by presenting their term projects to their peers, and sharing some food and drink. Contrary to what it might look like on the blog, I really have been working this whole time in Greece, and today was the culmination of all the learning the students have done The Symposium crowd at the Penthouse
The Symposium crowd at the Penthouse
 .

We met in the Penthouse, the student apartment where six of the young women live, because it was the largest space and I wanted a more relaxed atmosphere for the non-communication majors who were anxious about public speaking.

We heard fifteen speeches, alternating rhetorical criticism and persuasion projects. I was impressed by the creativity of the persuasion campaigns and the depth of analysis in the rhetorical criticisms. For example, some persuasion students created a movie on turtle-friendly beach etiquette to be shown to tourists just as their flights touch down on the Greek islands, a holographic bookmark, and a cartoon t-shirt gently satirizing Greek overdevelopment where once were forests.

The rhetorical criticism students conducted analyses of films like 300 and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, paintings like The Judgment of Paris and The Birth of Venus, Aristophanes' ancient comedy Lysistrata, and Constantine Cavafy's modern poem based on the Odyssey, "Ithaka."

After the speeches were over and they all handed in their papers for me to grade (a little light reading for the plane ride home), the students immediately turned their attention to their upcoming final exam in Greek language and their final paper for Indy's monuments class, and we all had pizza. Who knew Dominos delivered even here in Athens?
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