CHICAGO – On June 24, the National Hellenic Museum (NHM) released information about its latest online content including a lecture, Virtual Book Group, and Social Media Initiatives.

The Greeks of Colonial Florida with Menios Papadimitriou, the latest installment in NHM’s online lecture series, NHM's Resident Scholar Dr. Katherine Kelaidis sits down with Menios Papadimitriou, a doctoral student at Fordham University working on the modern history of Orthodox Christianity. Papadimitriou discusses an early Greek settlement in colonial America. 

Among NHM’s new Social Media Initiatives, NHM has launched several new recurring series that will be posted each week on social media such as "Great Philhellenes" and "Staff Pick" which will alternate each week in addition to the long running "From the Collections" series. These series will be posted to NHM's Facebook and Instagram pages, so be sure to follow NHM for more great online content!

The first of the "Great Philhellenes" series, features John Wesley Gilbert and is available on Facebook and Instagram.

NHM is also launching the Virtual Book Club facilitated by NHM Resident Scholar Dr. Katherine Kelaidis. Each month the NHM Book Club will choose a book that is either inspired by the Hellenic legacy or by a Greek-American author (and sometimes both). Then participants will gather to discuss the book on Zoom. The first book will be Omeros by the Nobel Prize-winning writer Derrick Walcott. This modern epic poem adapts Homer's Odyssey and Iliad to tell the story of Walcott's native St. Lucia and the writer's own life in a sweeping narrative that jumps from St. Lucia to Brookline, Massachusetts, to the great capitals of Europe.

The Book Club discussion will be held on the third Thursday of each month. Omeros by Derrick Walcott will be discussed in the first Zoom meeting on July 17, followed by Let Me Explain You by Annie Liontas on August 20, and Circe by Madeline Miller on September 17.

More information is available online: nationalhellenicmuseum.org.