Rae Dalven

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Rae Dalven (1905-1992) was a Romaniote (Greek/Jewish) author living in the United States of America. She is best known for her translations of Cavafy's works and for her books and plays about the Jews of Ioannina.

She was a professor of Modern Greek literature at New York University (NYU), where a prize is offered in her name by the A.S. Onassis Program in Hellenic Studies.

The Rae Dalven Prize is given for Outstanding Undergraduate Work In Byzantine Modern Greek Studies At New York University. The Program in Hellenic Studies requests submissions for the annual prize named in memory of the translator and critic Rae Dalven (1905-1992) to acknowledge excellence in modern Greek studies among undergraduate students at New York University.

The Rae Dalven Prize was awarded for the first time in 1997. Past recipients of the prize were:

2004-Georgia Giannoukouris

2003-Kaleroy Tzezailidis and Megan Manos

2002-Mariza Daras

2001-John Saragas Essay: The Greek American Diaspora in the 20th Century

2000-Niki Kekos Essay: "Intoxicated" by Death: The Civil War Poetry of Takis Sinopoulos

1999-Evelina Zarkh Essay: Shadows in the Mirror: Transcendent Vision and the Presence of the Past in Ritsos' "The Dead House" and "Under the Shadow of the Mountain."

1998-Artemis Loi Essay: Language and ideology in Karapanou's Kassandra and the Wolf

1997-Areti Serkizis Essay: Classical allusion in Seferis' Mythistorema

The American Jewis Yearbook 1994 (p. 573) has the following obituary: DALVEN, RAE, professor, translator; b. Preveza, Greece, Apr. 25, 1904; d. NYC, July 30, 1992; in U.S. since 1909. Educ: Hunter Coll., NYU (PhD). Prof., Eng. lit., and dept. chmn., LadycliffColl., Highland Falls, N.Y. Transl. of modern Greek poets and historian of the Jews in Greece, esp. the community of pre-Sephardic Romaniotes in Ioannina. Pres., Amer. Soc. of Sephardic Studies and ed. its journal, Sephardic Scholar; bd. mem., Amer. Friends of the Jewish Museum in Greece. Transl.: Modern Greek Poetry, Complete Poems of Cavafy, The Fourth Dimension (Yannis Ritsos), and others. Au.: The Jews of Ioannina (1990); A Season in Hell, a play about Rimbaud and Verlaine; and Our Kind of People, an autobiographical play.