Greece and Columbia

All incoming first-year students are given a copy of the Iliad before they even arrive on campus, in order to kickstart their undergraduate intellectual journey. Columbia’s Program in Hellenic Studies is one of the oldest and most active in the United States.

Columbia’s Low and Butler Libraries reference Greek architecture. It is no coincidence that, at Columbia, the frieze of Butler Library displays the names of six famous Greek (Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes) and two Roman (Cicero, Vergil) intellectuals from antiquity.

The list of collaborations and faculty partnerships that currently exist between Columbia and Greek universities and organizations is long. Here are a few examples:

• Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society – Panteion University.
• Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society – National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
• Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society – University of Thessaly.
• The Columbia Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science – National Technical University of Athens.
• Columbia Summer in Greece undergraduate program.
• Excavation in Boeotia, in collaboration with the Greek Department of Antiquities and the Athens Archaeological Society.
• International research projects: “Geographies and Histories of the Ottoman Supernatural Tradition: Exploring Magic, the Marvelous, and the Strange in Ottoman Mentalities,” and “The Project on Macedonia and Southeast Europe.”