[MGSA-L] Professor André Gerolymatos

George Gedeon g.gedeon at sympatico.ca
Sat Jun 1 08:57:08 PDT 2019


May he rest in peace.

GG


> On Jun 1, 2019, at 8:52 AM, MGSA exec. director <mgsa.org at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> MGSA members will be saddened to hear of the death of André Gerolymatos on 30 May, 2019. 
> Professor Gerolymatos was Hellenic Canadian Congress of British Columbia Chair in Hellenic Studies and, since 2011, Director of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. A distinguished historian of military and diplomatic history, many of you will also remember him as our gracious host at the 2009 MGSA Symposium in Vancouver.
> 
> https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/newsroom/news/ag.html <https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/newsroom/news/ag.html>
> 
> His longtime faculty colleague at Simon Fraser University, Professor Dimitris Krallis, was kind enough to share with us his own personal reflections on André Gerolymatos:
> 
> "We admire creative scholars, people whose writing forces you to reconsider all that you know, women and men whose work puts a smile on your face, even as you cry "aha, now I get it"! Today I wish to celebrate a variant to that earlier image, the scholar who creates. And so I write about my colleague of twelve years and collaborator on myriad Hellenic Studies related projects, the late André Gerolymatos. A scholar who creates exists in the interstices between library and administration, academia and main-street, lecture-hall and board room. The scholar who creates foregoes sabbaticals during twenty-three years at his institution to dedicate himself to the creation of narratives in the form of books, on the one hand, but also, on the other, the setting up of the infrastructure that will sustain narrative creation long after he is retired. The scholar who creates Engages the World – attuned to his institution’s own motto, before that motto was ever a glimmer of an idea in a marketing guru’s brain – and straddles intellectual creation and policy, scholarly writing and radio commentary, knowledge and knowledge translation. The scholar who creates assumes a well-funded professorship and, rather than live the life of a gentleman scholar, spending his generous research funding on leisurely trips away from campus on his way to "Euphoric State University", instead launches himself on a trail of program-building that leads to the hire of five other academic colleagues and three supporting staff. The scholar who creates bucks the trend of cuts in academic positions and engages a major philanthropic foundation in a vision of growth, outreach, and creative knowledge translation. The scholar who creates brings together humanists, technologists, universities and governments from multiple countries in creative collaborations that straddle oceans. The scholar who creates inspires a work ethic of engagement, commitment, and ambition in the people surrounding him. The scholar who creates writes about divisions and strife even as he brings together, in projects, conferences, and symposia, the right and the left, the indigenous and the settler, the journalist, the poet, the actor and the scholar. I worked closely over the past twelve years of my career at SFU with André Gerolymatos. From that night of my campus interview when we connected on the way to the candidate's dinner by way of stories about Bartzotas and the KKE, to endless discussions on future grant projects, disagreements on scholarly approaches, bike lanes, and other trifles, and through a relentless process of program growth I came to appreciate the drive and dedication that makes the scholar who creates. My colleagues in Hellenic Studies owe that scholar a debt of gratitude for his enthusiastic readiness to take us onboard on his creative journey."
> 
> We extend our deepest sympathies to Professor Gerolymatos' family, friends, and colleagues. May he rest in peace.
> 
> -- 
> Vangelis Calotychos
> MGSA Executive Director
> Visiting Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Brown University
> _______________________________________________
> List-Info: https://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/mgsa-l

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://maillists.uci.edu/pipermail/mgsa-l/attachments/20190601/f9ad418c/attachment.html>


More information about the MGSA-L mailing list