The Municipality of Rethymnon and the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (IMS) of the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) are organizing for the year 2025 a series of lectures addressed to the general public of Rethymnon. In these talks, open to everyone, the Institute's researchers will present elements of their research work in an accessible way, followed by a discussion.

The first lecture wil take place on Monday, February 10, 2025 at 19.30 pm by Nikos Potamianos, a researcher at the IMS-ITE, who will present how women participated in the Athenian carnival from the final years of Ottoman rule until the Second World War.

Both the celebration of the Athenian carnival and gender relations underwent many changes over the course of a century and a half. In summary, women gradually assumed an increasingly active role in the celebration, first joining mixed social gatherings of men and women, then beginning to dress up themselves, and ultimately gaining more and more freedom to access public space. On the other hand, the carnival is "tamed", violence and vulgar language are restricted, satire and social and political critique are largely displaced, and the street carnival events, after their peak with the parades of 1887-1914, decline and are replaced by dances in entertainment venues.

These changes in the carnival were influenced by both impersonal processes, such as commercialization and the "civilizing process," and the cultural hegemony established by the modernizing sector of the bourgeoisie. However, the intentional actions of women, both from the bourgeois and popular classes, also played a role.