A modern poet reads ancient war texts: politics, life and death in George Seferis’ ‘The Last Day’*
It has been argued that ‘The Last Day’, written during the Metaxas dictatorship and while the Second World War was looming on the horizon, constitutes Seferis’ answer to the exhausted model of the ‘national poet’. The aim of this article is to examine in detail the poem’s allusions to ancient war texts, in order to deal with what stood at the heart of this answer, namely the key concept of the ‘historical poet’. Of prime importance will be issues of language and gender raised by the poem, as well as the historical context of its writing and reception.
The Cultural Wealth of Cyprus and the Role of Nature in Seferis's Logbook III
In George Seferis’s (1900-71) Logbook III, the place names are a recurrent phenomenon, especially in the titles of poems. As discussed in this paper, beyond the titles and other elements that denote Cyprus, Seferis refers to the island’s cultural wealth and history in other ways. We examine how his description of natural elements like worms, leaves, trees and birds, and cultural heritage in general, suggests strong symbolism and even resists occupation and invasion. They react and rebel together to the threat of invaders and function as protectors of Cyprus’s national identity and reminders of the island’s Greek cultural character.
In-services and empty threats: The roles of organizational practices and workplace experiences in shaping U.S. educators' understandings of students' rights.
This paper applies theoretical frameworks from organizational sociology and sociolegal studies to examine factors associated with educators' conceptions of students' rights to due process in disciplinary actions. We analyze a unique representative data set of 402 teachers and 200 administrators in U.S. high schools to investigate how educators understand the rights to due process articulated in the Supreme Court case of Goss v. Lopez (1975). We then examine whether individual characteristics and participation in organizational processes are associated with educators' understandings of students' due process rights. Findings suggest that educators' understandings of students' entitlements to due process vary with educators' level of education, experience of school-related legal threats, and participation in district or diocese in-service training programs on students' rights. Results point to organizational climate as a key factor in shaping educators' rights conceptions and the role of law in American schools.