Event

16 Jun 2022

Lecture: The City In-Between: Competing visions for the image of Limassol

Lecture: The City In-Between: Competing visions for the image of Limassol, By Harrison Blackman

Date: 16 June 2022 | Location: The CVAR | Time: 18:30 | Language: English

One of the possible origins for the name of the city now known as Limassol is ανάμεσος, referring to the place as a city geographically “in-between” the more important urban centres of antiquity, Amathus and Kourion.

Ironically, the etymology of being “in-between” suits the status of Limassol today—a city caught in-between its past as a sleepy industrial port and a rapidly expanding, burgeoning modern metropolis whose impressive scale seems to emulate Dubai.

Amidst that transition, Limassol is a city whose form remains unsettled, whose idioms for expressing its status as a unique place are contested, torn somewhere between the scattered columns of the sanctuary of Amathus and the massive cruise ships anchored offshore. Out of this confusion have emerged several visions for what Limassol was, is, and will become. This presentation, a work-in-progress deriving from my research sponsored by the US Fulbright Program, is an attempt to track the competing visions for Limassol. Using an urban studies approach that combines history, journalism, photography, and creative nonfiction, I will present a narrative collage of a city in-between, an approach I hope to apply to bicommunal issues in Nicosia and Famagusta.

Harrison Blackman is a writer, editor, and journalist originally from Southern California. A Fulbright fellow at The Cyprus Institute and working with its APAC Labs research team, Harrison earned an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno, and a BA in history from Princeton University. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, and Literary Hub.

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The lecture is co-organized by the CVAR, the Cyprus Institute, and with the support of the Active Citizens Fund. RSVP: Tel. 22300994

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