DENNIS A. GEORGES, a native of Arfara, Greece, joined the Greek resistance as a guerrilla fighter during the German occupation in WWII, fought the Communists during the Greek Civil War, and later was a member of the Royal Hellenic Air Force, serving as part of the U.N. contingent in Korea. He received the Truman Citation, presented to him by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and was decorated by the president of South Korea and King Pavlos of Greece. While stationed in Keesler Air Base in Biloxi, he met his bride-to-be, Anita Pelias, born in New Orleans of Greek parents. In 1954 he immigrated to New Orleans and began work for his father-in-law in the Imperial Trading Company; he ultimately became Chairman of the Board and served in that capacity until his death in 2002. He was president of New Orleans's Greek Orthodox Board of Trustees and was dedicated to preserving his Hellenic heritage both in the United States and Greece, establishing and promoting cultural events and charities.
2023 – Dimitris Plantzos (University of Athens) – Greek and their Marbles: From Global Heritage to Local Pride (and Back)
2022 – Melissa Lane (Princeton University) – Did the Greeks believe their lawgivers invented law?
2019 – Patricia Rosenmeyer (The University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill) – Conversations with a Colossus: the Vocal Memnon Statue in Egyptian Thebes
2018 – Emily Greenwood (Yale University) – Reading Greek and the Politics of the Human
2017 – Joshua Katz (Princeton University) – Aeschylus the Trojan
2016 – Theater of War: A Dramatic Reading of Scenes from Sophocles’ Ajax – Presented by Outside the Wire: A new version by Bryan Doerries
2015 – Adriaan Lanni (Harvard Law School) – Ancient Athens and Institutional Design: Community Justice and Transitional Justice in Comparative Perspective
2014 – Jack Davis (University of Cincinnati) – Reconstructing Early modern Landscapes of 18th Century Greece: Messenia from Ottoman and Venetian Sources
2013 – Jeremy McInerney (University of Pennsylvania) – Delphi and Kalapodi: A Tale of Two Sanctuaries
2012 – Lisa Nevett (University of Michigan) – Beyond the Rhetoric: Towards a Topography of Women’s Activities in Late Archaic and Early Classical Athens
2011 – Heinrich von Staden (Princeton University) – Experiments on the Living: Ancient Science and Medicine
2010 – Susan Langdon (University of Missouri) – The Tell-Tale Hearth: Art and Gender in Dark Age Greece
2009 – Eva Prionas (Stanford University) – Hellenic Ideals and the Education of Future Generations in the United States
2008 – Vassilis Lambropoulos (University of Michigan) – Hubris in Greek Theater and Polotics
2007 – Angelos Chaniotis (All Souls College, Oxford University) – Petrified Voices, Petrified Emotions: Understanding Ancient Graffiti in Aphrodisias
2006 – Christopher Faraone (University of Chicago) – Magical and Medical Responses to the Wandering Womb in the Ancient Greek World
2006 – Jacob A. Howland (University of Tulsa) – The Mythology of Philosophy: Plato’s Republic and the Odyssey of the Soul
2005 – Robert Ousterhout (University of Pennsylvania) – “Bestride the Very Peak of Heaven”: The Parthenon in the Middle Ages
2004 – Paul Cartledge (University of Cambridge, Clare College) – Becoming a Citizen: From Ancient Greece to Today
2003 – Gregory Nagy (Harvard University) – The Multiple Lives of Homer
