Ellopos Blog

Several classrooms, as well as marble columns, a Byzantine chapel and an outdoor theater will be featured on a $5-million Hellenic Studies Center, a ground breaking project by the University of Rhode Island (URI). The 22,000-square-foot building will highlight the contributions of Greece to the Western civilization. Disciplines studied by as many as 2,000 students a year, include art, classical studies, history, literature, philosophy, rhetoric, theater and underwater archaeology.

Construction of the distinctive facility will be paid for by Paideia, a nonprofit Greek cultural organization, which will share the building with URI. The university has agreed to pay an estimated $180,000 a year in heat, electricity and maintenance costs. The building is scheduled to open in the fall of 2011.

In addition to several classrooms, the center will be home to the university’s Humanities Center, which grants fellowships to graduate students and faculty. The educational portion of the building will be called Rodos, in honor of the Greek island of Rhodes and Rhode Island.

“Many of our core values and basic institutions derive from Greek civilization,” former URI President Robert L. Carothers said. “The presence on the Kingston campus of a center for the study of classical Hellenic thought and art will give us a richer appreciation of the past and help shape more thoughtful and reflective graduates for the future.” Designs of the center illustrate a stately, imposing classical structure with an outdoor theater that will be next to the Fine Arts building.

Despina Metakos, a 1991 URI alumna and a member of Paideia, said the building underscores the importance of ancient Greece to the sciences, mathematics, medicine, architecture and democracy. “We are extraordinarily proud of our heritage,” she said. “Not everyone can travel to Greece. But we want people to take a ride down to URI and walk through the building and see a production in the open-air theater and explore an authentic Byzantine chapel. It will be almost like a museum.”

“So much of our Western civilization can trace roots to Hellenic culture,” Brownell said. “I think it’s terrific that through this building, the cultural connection to the past will be symbolized.”

From Projo; excerpts, edited by Ellopos Blog.

Cf. The Greeks Us - Western Identity of the Western World, * Ancient Greek History and the West, * Development of Greek Philosophy, * On the Ancient Greek Literature, * Ancient Greek Political Theory, * Ancient Greek Art, * Ancient Greek Architecture, * Greek is the higher life of man, * Greek Mathematics and Astronomy

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