Johanna Hanink is professor of Classics at Brown University, and her work in Classics focuses on classical Athens, particularly on the intellectual and political life of the city's fourth century BCE. She is especially interested in the construction and reception (in both antiquity and more modern times) of the idea of the ancient 'Greek miracle'. Some of her work touches on the points of contact between modern politics and ideas about ancient Greece, and antiquity more generally. She is the author of Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy (Cambridge 2014) and The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity (Harvard 2017). She is is a translator Ancient as well as Modern Greek, having translated among others The Archeologist and Selected Sea Stories (Penguin 2021; a volume of works by Andreas Karkavitsas), she is active in Brown's Program in Modern Greek Studies  and hosts a biweekly podcast called Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas.

Professor Hanink spoke to Rethinking Greece* on how she was inspired by other academic podcasts and her desire for more informal scholarly dialogue to create her own podcast, Lesche, which aims to foster a sense of community within academia. Hanink discusses featuring authors of longue durée studies, as well as translators—such as Emily Wilson and Daniel Mendelsohn—whose work offers a unique bird’s-eye view of entire Ancient Greek texts and makes them more accessible to contemporary readers.

She also highlights the wealth of creative work inspired by Greek mythology, such as Kaos, the British mythological dark comedy TV series, whose creator Charlie Covell, appeared on the podcast. Hanink emphasizes that the barriers between academics and creatives should be lower, and that there should be space for open dialogue between the two groups about their work on Greek antiquity. Finally, she expresses her hope that the podcast will gain listeners among undergraduates—not just classicists—especially at a time when the Humanities are under threat; students need to know that Humanities research demands real expertise and generates new knowledge.

Professor Hanink, your podcast Lesche brings together Hellenists to discuss their latest work. What inspired you to create this kind of conversational platform, and why did you choose the format of a podcast over more traditional academic dissemination? How does this concept of a lesche inform your approach?

During the pandemic, I hosted a few Zoom events for my department for which I interviewed colleagues about their newly published books. I really enjoyed the format—the conversations last about 45 minutes, and covered everything from the book’s conception to the author’s ideas for their next project. Then, over the last couple of years, I became an avid listener of Anthony Kaldellis’ podcast Byzantium and Friends. We didn’t have anything quite like that in the field of Ancient Greek Studies (nor is there one for Roman Studies, as far as I know). By “like that” I mean a podcast hosted by an active researcher in the field who curates a program of conversations with colleagues about their latest work in the field. It all finally clicked into place last summer, when some exciting titles came out: e.g., Rachel Kousser’s Alexander at the End of the World, but also Ferdia Lennon’s wonderful Glorious Exploits, which takes an anecdote from Plutarch about the Athenian invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War and spins a whole novel out from it. When those books appeared it pushed me over the edge, and I decided to give podcasting a try.

The concept of the lesche certainly informs the vibe I’m going for: I wanted the podcast to feel like a place where people can chat informally about their work and ideas. Honestly, I often prefer those kinds of relaxed conversations to formal academic lectures. The ideas seem to flow more naturally, and I like to be able to joke around a little with the guests. I also like that the word lesche has similar, positive resonances of friendship and idea-exchange in both Ancient and Modern Greek.

Your focus is on the latest work of Hellenists in the field of Classics. What trends or shifts in Hellenistic studies have you noticed emerging through these discussions? Are there particular themes you find repeatedly surfacing?

I try to cover a good spread of topics, but the books/projects I do choose to cover inevitably reflect my own interests. I spend a lot of time scouring publishers’ lists of forthcoming books, though, and on the basis of those I’d say that there is still a lot of interest in classical Athens, and that maybe the boom in Hellenistic Studies is subsiding somewhat. (I hope that I’m wrong.) I’ve especially enjoyed speaking to guests about projects with very long temporal ranges—John Ma on his Polis book, Emma Greensmith on her new Cambridge Companion to Greek Epic, and archaeologist Alex Knodell on the Small Cycladic Islands Project (SCIP). Those kinds of longue durée studies are really important.

Translation is another big theme; the first season featured Emily Wilson on her Iliad and Daniel Mendelsohn on his Odyssey. I hope to have more translators on to discuss their work in Season 2. Classicists tend to read very small passages from texts in a fragmented way, whereas translators gain a unique birds-eye view of the entire work they’ve translated. There’s a lot of insight to be had in that.

Season one of Lesche features conversations about monumental translation efforts like Daniel Mendelsohn’s Odyssey and Emily Wilson’s Iliad, as well as the Cambridge Greek Lexicon. What do you think these projects reveal about how we’re reimagining access to ancient Greek texts today?

Both Wilson and Mendelsohn’s translations of Homer and Diggle’s Cambridge Greek Lexicon share an aim of rendering Ancient Greek texts more accessible to contemporary readers, whether those readers know no Ancient Greek whatsoever or are experts who still need to consult a good lexicon every so often. I work with both kinds of texts, in my teaching (for which I assign translations of Homer) and my research (I’m writing a commentary, and use the CGL all the time). There really is still a strong interest in these texts, and it’s been exciting to host conversations with scholars who are making better access to them possible.

The podcast has been running for a year now. What has been a particularly memorable or insightful moment for you as a host, perhaps one that deepened your own understanding or sparked new ideas?

I have to say it was really a thrill to do an episode with Charlie Covell, creator of the Netflix show Kaos. Kaos sparked a lot of discussion in the U.S., Britain, Greece, and beyond, and I loved talking to Charlie about their vision for the show and how they brought it to life. After the episode came out Charlie and I stayed in touch, and we were lucky enough to host them for a week in the Classics Department at Brown last spring. For their final event with us, Charlie did a table reading, with a Brown undergraduate actor, of their short one-act play called “Asphodel,” which had marked the start of Charlie’s worldbuilding for Kaos. There is so much creative work out there inspired by Greek mythology, and I’d love to see more dialogue between those creators and academics. Creators read academic works, and academics teach about creative reception of antiquity, so the barriers between them really should be lower. Meeting Charlie through the podcast helped me see that more clearly.

Looking ahead, what role do you see for the podcast in engaging with these broader, perhaps more critical or unconventional, perspectives on ancient history and classics, beyond traditional scholarly work? Are there audiences beyond academia you especially hope to reach?

I’m always happy to hear that audiences outside academia are interested in the podcast, but one of the reasons I started Lesche was to improve the sense of community within the academic field. There are amazing podcasts out there that speak to wide general audiences, but I do want Lesche to be a place where both academics and creatives can speak about their work on Greek antiquity in technical terms. I initially envisioned the podcast as an academic one, but something I love about conversation is that it can make even highly-specialized topics very accessible—much more accessible than on the pages of an academic journal. A lot of the listeners are non-academics.

I would be very happy to see the podcast gain listenership among undergraduates, and not just classicists. I think it’s good for students to be exposed to academic research in the Humanities—that is, to learn that Humanities research really does require expertise and produce new knowledge. In a moment when the Humanities are very much under threat (we always say that, but it’s truer than ever right now), people need to know that Humanities work is serious, and the most basic aim of Lesche is to showcase the serious and exciting new work going on in my field.

*Interview to: Ioulia Livaditi

The post Rethinking Greece|Ancient Texts, Modern Voices: Inside Johanna Hanink’s ‘Lesche’ Podcast appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

Nikos Christofis, Assistant Professor of International Cultural Relations at the Department of Language and Intercultural Studies at the University of Thessaly, was interviewed by Rethinking Greece* on the occasion of the publication of the collective volume History and Historiography in Greece :Recent Trends, which he edited. Professor Christofis examines how Greek historiography has evolved—from nation-building narratives to transnational and interdisciplinary approaches. He highlights the impact of the Metapolitefsi period, the rise of gender and memory studies, and the growing internationalization of the field and interconnection between historiography and national identity. Finally, he emphasizes the importance of transnational and comparative frameworks in decentering Greek exceptionalism and aligning modern Greek historiography with broader international scholarly trends. Despite challenges such as language barriers and limited funding, Greek historiography is increasingly dialoguing with global currents.

What are the central aims and motivations behind this volume on history and historiography in Greece?

The idea for this collection originated at the 26th Modern Greek Studies Association Symposium, held in Sacramento, California, on 7–9 November 2019. The symposium showcased a wide range of topics and high-quality research on various aspects of modern Greek history, which brought to my attention the pressing need for an updated volume on Greek historiography. The vision for this book became even clearer when I began teaching the course “Theories of History and Historiography” in the “Public History” postgraduate program at the Hellenic Open University, where I serve as an adjunct lecturer. It became evident that a comprehensive volume addressing the key themes explored in that course could serve as a valuable resource for both graduate and postgraduate students.

Against this background, the project aspires to serve as a contemporary companion to the monumental two-volume proceedings of the Fourth International History Congress, published by the Institute for Neohellenic Research in 2002, which was entirely dedicated to Greek historiography. The book traces the evolution of Greek historical scholarship by reviewing the ideas, methods, and schools of history shaping the field, while, at the same time, places Greek historiography in an international context by checking how these developments correspond with international trends and their rate of development alongside global shifts in scholarship.

How did the establishment of the Greek state in 1830 influence the development of historical writing in Greece? What was the "national mission" of the University of Athens and its historians in the early decades of the Greek state?

As in many parts of the world, the development of the historical sciences in Greece was closely tied to the formation of the modern Greek nation-state in 1830. From the outset, historians made significant efforts to conceptualize a unified national state with a continuous historical narrative and a shared national consciousness, enabling the Greek people to claim a legitimized past stretching from antiquity to the present.

Following the Greek Revolution and the establishment of the independent state, history proved instrumental in achieving the broader goal of national consolidation. Greek antiquity and the Byzantine period were especially emphasized as sources of prestige and cultural legitimacy, particularly through the influential writings of figures such as Constantine Paparrigopoulos and Spyridon Zambelios.

In this context, the University of Athens—founded in 1837—played a central role in shaping the historical sciences in Greece for more than eight decades. It not only supplied personnel for the emerging state apparatus but also helped construct and disseminate a national historical narrative. The university’s symbolic authority was pivotal in promoting the Megali Idea, the dominant irredentist nationalist ideology of the time, and in advancing the cause of Hellenism, particularly within the territories still under Ottoman rule. Language, religion, and especially history were employed as key unifying elements, intended to forge connections between the subjects of the new Hellenic Kingdom and the Greek-speaking Orthodox populations of the Ottoman Empire.

How did the Metapolitefsi period (post-1974) impact Greek historiography and introduce new approaches?

The Metapolitefsi—the period following the fall of the Colonels’ dictatorship in 1974—marked the beginning of a gradual yet profound sociopolitical transformation in Greece. In the realm of historiography, it sparked a significant "explosion," evident in the structural evolution and expansion of the professional historical community. Many Greek historians who had sought refuge primarily in Europe during the dictatorship returned shortly thereafter, bringing with them fresh perspectives and revitalizing the field. Exposed to new intellectual currents and in dialogue with international scholars, these returning historians introduced critical questions and approaches that enabled the integration of Greek history into broader global narratives. To a considerable extent, this generation reshaped the practice of historical writing in Greece, with many assuming influential roles within the emerging institutional landscape.

What roles have Gender History, Biography & Memory Studies played in shaping recent historiographical developments in Greece? What significance do these approaches hold within the broader field of Greek historical studies?"

Gender History, Biography, and Memory Studies emerged within the broader intellectual movement known as the New History, which gained prominence across various national historiographical traditions. Broadly speaking, this movement represented an epistemological shift from viewing history as a fixed set of facts to understanding it as a field of inquiry and interpretation. The New History critically challenged both the positivist illusions of traditional historiography and the dominant nationalist narratives propagated by established academic institutions. Instead, it emphasized the analysis of economic and social structures, prioritized interpretation over description, and employed impersonal analytical categories. In essence, history began to be approached as a social science.

Although the roots of this paradigm shift in Greek historiography can be traced to earlier decades, it crystallized during the late 1970s and 1980s. These new approaches have offered alternative perspectives on the past, particularly by highlighting the experiences of marginalized groups and questioning established historical narratives. Through the lenses of gender history, biography, and memory studies, scholars are now able to interrogate social structures, analyze gendered discourses, explore individual lives, personalize history, and examine collective memory and cultural practices. Collectively, these fields have made Greek historiography more inclusive, dynamic, and nuanced.

In what ways have comparative and transnational frameworks impacted Greek historiography, and how have they contributed to rethinking national narratives or methodological approaches?

Comparative and transnational frameworks have profoundly reshaped Greek historiography – transnational more than comparative history, I believe – by challenging the traditional nation-centered narratives that emphasized Greece’s exceptionalism (e.g. the example of the Greek Revolution) and linear national development. These approaches situate Greek history within broader regional, European, and global contexts, revealing the interconnectedness of Greek experiences with those of the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. By highlighting cross-border flows of people, ideas, and goods, they have decentered, or at least they try to do so, the nation-state as the sole unit of analysis and introduced interdisciplinary methods that incorporate social, cultural, and economic perspectives. This has led to more pluralistic histories that include minority voices, diasporic influences, and transnational actors, thereby complicating nationalist myths and encouraging critical reflection on the construction of Greek identity. Consequently, Greek historiography has become more dialogic and internationally engaged, enriching both its methodological toolkit and its understanding of national narratives as contingent and multifaceted rather than fixed and exceptional.

In your view, how do historiography and national identity intersect, and in what ways do they shape or influence one another?

Historiography and national identity are deeply interconnected, as the writing of history often serves as a crucial tool in constructing and legitimizing the nation. Through selective emphasis on certain events, figures, and cultural achievements—while often omitting uncomfortable or divisive aspects—historiography helps forge a shared narrative that binds individuals into a collective identity. This narrative is further reinforced through educational curricula, public monuments, national holidays, and museums, all of which draw from dominant historical interpretations to cultivate a sense of belonging and continuity. Conversely, national identity also shapes historiographical agendas, as state institutions, political ideologies, and cultural priorities influence which histories are preserved, taught, or suppressed. In more recent decades, however, the emergence of new historiographical approaches—such as gender history, memory studies, and postcolonial critique—has begun to challenge traditional nationalist narratives, offering more inclusive and critical perspectives that reflect the diversity and complexity of the past. As a result, the relationship between historiography and national identity remains dynamic, with each continually shaping and reshaping the other in response to evolving political, social, and intellectual contexts.

What do you identify as the current trends and key challenges in the study of modern Greek history? To what extent does the Greek academic community engage with broader international developments in historiography?

Current trends in the study of modern Greek history reveal a significant shift away from traditional nation-centric narratives toward more nuanced, transnational, and interdisciplinary approaches. Greek historians are increasingly situating Greece within broader Ottoman, Balkan, and Mediterranean, but also global contexts, exploring shared histories and cross-border influences that challenge earlier linear and exceptionalist national stories. This shift is complemented by the incorporation of gender studies, social history, and cultural analysis, which have expanded the field beyond elite-focused perspectives to include marginalized voices and diverse experiences.

However, the field faces key challenges, notably a degree of insularity due to the predominance of Greek-language scholarship and limited translations into English – although all the more the new generation of Greek historians publish in other languages – which restrict its international visibility and integration. Economic difficulties have further compounded these issues by reducing funding for research and causing a brain drain of promising scholars seeking opportunities abroad. Despite these obstacles, the Greek academic community is increasingly engaging with global historiographical developments through participation in international research networks, publication in global journals, and interdisciplinary initiatives that align with contemporary methodological trends. Prestigious European grants and collaborations, such as those involving the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, demonstrate growing recognition of Greek scholarship internationally. Thus, while resource limitations and language barriers remain significant challenges, the adoption of comparative and transnational frameworks alongside efforts to foster global academic dialogue signal a promising evolution in modern Greek historiography.

*Interview to Ioulia Livaditi

The post Rethinking Greece | Nikos Christofis on History and Historiography in Greece appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

Dimitris Tziovas is Professor Emeritus of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham, where he taught for over thirty five years and supervised many research students. In 2022 he received the Grand Greek State Award for his contribution to scholarship. His book Greece from Junta to Crisis: Modernization, Transition and Diversity (Bloomsbury 2021) won the European Society of Modern Greek Studies Book Prize. He has served as Director of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham (2000-2003), on the editorial board of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies (1995-2009; 2020-; Reviews Editor 1995-2005) and Journal of Modern Greek Studies (U.S.A 1992-2007). His most recent publication is "Ιστορία, Έθνος και Μυθιστόρημα: Τραύμα, Μνήμη και Μεταφορά" (2024). His research interests involve the study of Greek Modernism in a comparative context; the reception of Greek antiquity and Byzantium; the study of Greek fiction informed by recent developments in critical theory; Greek diaspora and travel writing; nationalism and Greek culture; the Greek language controversy; and the cultural encounters between Greece and the Balkans.

Professor Tziovas spoke to Rethinking Greece* on the duration of Metapolitefsi, the aftermath of the crisis and its impact on the (self)image of Greece, how Greek fiction proposed a critical revisiting of the past, the influence of the Greek diaspora on cultural production, why Greek cinema was successful in conversing with global cultural trends, his proposal for a "hybrid" model of analysis instead of the dualist and ‘pendulum' models that accentuate polarities in Greek modern history, and finally, on the Metapolitefsi period as an era of identities.

Beyond your academic career, you are a public intellectual that often writes on Modern Greek Studies and Greece’s image abroad. In your book “Greece from Junta to Crisis,” you mention that the recent financial crisis led to a reassessment of the Metapolitefsi era and yet another “rediscovery” of Greece from the West. Where do you think we stand on these issues today i.e. the assessment of Metapolitefsi and Greece’s (self)image?

The period following the fall of the military junta in 1974 is known in Greek as Metapolitefsi (meaning regime change), referring both to the transition from dictatorship to democracy and to the ensuing period. Though it has been praised as a period of peace, democratization and improved access to health and education, there is no agreement as to when it ends. Some argue that it ends as early as June 1975, others place its conclusion in 1989 with the end of the Cold War or much later with the economic crisis. In my view, the crisis was both a global and a local event which turned the international spotlight to Greece, judging from the number of articles in the popular press, prime-time television programmes and academic studies on the Greek crisis. Since 1974, no other event in Greece attracted such a global interest. During the crisis a frequent use of stereotypes was made either of those modelled on Zorba depicting Greeks as feckless, lazy or profligate, or the ones based on the contrast between ancient and modern Greece.

The imaginative force of Greek mythology has been repeatedly deployed to describe the trials of the Greek people in images and cartoons or in stereotypical headlines such as ‘Greek tragedy’, ‘Greeks bearing gifts’ and ‘Odyssey without end’. It is interesting to note that the connection between Ancient and Modern Greece is made by westerners only in difficult periods in order to criticize contemporary Greeks as not worthy of their heritage. In short, the Metapolitefsi starts with the euphoria of the restoration of democracy (despite the invasion of Cyprus) and ends with the melancholy of the crisis and an attempt by the country to redefine its (self)image. After the crisis Greece, together with other countries, are entering an era of polycrisis and are facing increasingly new challenges posed by the climate, artificial intelligence, migration, demography and the shortage of energy.

In Greece, literature often explored historical topics—like the Civil War—before historians did, at least until the post-dictatorship period. Does this trend still exist? How has the relationship between history and literature changed in recent decades?

The gradual transformation of Greek fiction since the fall of junta involved the erosion of the national history by highlighting marginalized events and the critical revisiting of the past. Fiction explored aspects of the historical past not touched before or followed the trend in Greek society towards diversity and the creation of space for the inclusion of the Other more closely than poetry did. The themes which have preoccupied fiction writers since the early 1990s can be classified under three broad and overlapping categories: identity and otherness, the historical past and the validity of representation, and cultural metaphors and cosmopolitanism. Novels with a historical theme do not aim to recreate the past but challenge the modalities of historiography and the truth-seeking involvement with the past. Narrativity emerged as the common ground between literature and history while the notion of mnemohistory signifies the impact of memory studies on both fields. It is remarkable the number of novels published on the Greek Civil War and its aftermath, focusing on the role of memory and highlighting the interaction between fiction and archival investigation. The emergence of graphic novels reinvigorated to some extent the historical orientation of Greek fiction which now tends to deal with current biopolitical issues.

You have noted that, during the Metapolitefsi, Greek culture became more outward-looking, with a renewed appreciation for the diaspora’s role. Can you tell us more about how the Greek diaspora’s perspective has influenced cultural production?

Up to 1974 Greece’s image was the one constructed mostly by foreign writers and scholars such as Arnold Toynbee, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durell, Patrick Leigh Fermor or Jacques Lacarrière. Following the fall of the dictatorship Greece gradually attempted a rebranding by promoting its own image and becoming more extrovert. This coincides with a preoccupation with Greekness and the publication in collective volumes of the essays by important literary figures of the 1930s such as George Seferis, Odysseas Elytis and George Theotokas. Since the 1980s the term ‘diaspora’ has been less strongly associated with a traumatic experience and has started to signify something positive in terms of its historical and cultural contribution. Diaspora writers and artists received special attention, and Greek populations were ‘discovered’ in some former socialist countries. Many writers started placing their stories outside Greece and there has been a particular emphasis on border literature. The global aspirations of the Greek nation since the 1990s changed dramatically during the crisis when Greece became once again a country of emigration, this time not of manual workers but of young professionals seeking skilled employment abroad due to the crisis. The earlier touristic image of the country as earthly paradise has been challenged and Greece has been treated as an ideological construct of the West or as a cryptocolony, even though the country has never been strictly speaking a western colony.

The push for Europeanization has made national identity an important topic, shaping Greece’s modern identity in dialogue with Europe. How do you see this relationship evolving in today’s complex political landscape?

Attitudes to Europe are central to the culture of post-junta Greece and reflect its ambivalence, ranging from Euroscepticism to fervent Europeanism. The West started to be associated more with Europe and democracy and not so much with the Cold-war identification with anti-communism. Economic and institutional Europeanization/integration have led to a preoccupation with identity since statements such as ‘Greece belongs to the West’ can be seen as identity statements. The dominance of the term ‘Europeanization’ in the political discourse raises the question as to whether we can talk about the Europeanization of Greek culture in the same way as many analysts talk about institutional or political Europeanization. On the other hand, anti-Europeanism has often been associated with populism and been represented as defying rationalism and modernization but, most importantly, culturally isolationist and unproductive.

In your books, you point out that, during the Metapolitefsi, Greek novels aimed to go beyond national boundaries, and in the past 15 years, Greek cinema has tried to do the same. Have these efforts been successful? How did these two art forms relate to broader European and international artistic trends?

Several recent Greek novels take place (partly or entirely) outside Greece or are written by Greeks residing abroad. They involve travel or migration, and they point to the increasing centrality of space, the growing role of technology and the fluidity of identities. As part of the effort of making Greek culture more extrovert there were attempts to promote Greek literature abroad, but the emphasis is no longer on national literatures but on individual writers or texts as part of a global literary network. Contemporary Greek literature lacked the emblematic figures of Angelopoulos and Lanthimos who made Greek cinema known beyond its national borders. By overcoming the earlier preoccupation with political history, the new cinema of the period of the crisis has become increasingly transnational, performative and biopolitical. The new filmmakers deconstruct the image of Greece as a holiday idyll that had been constructed by earlier films, going one step further in interrogating the notion of national cinema, trying to reach a transnational audience. In this respect, Greek cinema was more successful than Greek literature in gaining wider recognition and conversing with global cultural trends.

One of the most enduring interpretations of modern Greek identity is that of cultural dualism—between a culture of modernization and an underdog mentality. What do you think of this interpretation? Would you suggest an alternative?

Cultural and political dualism, in its various forms, has emerged as the dominant model of analysis for the post-junta period as well as the earlier history of Greece. In the early 1990s the political scientist Nikiforos Diamandouros charted the evolution of two cultures. The older of these two, the underdog culture, has been marked by a pronounced introversion, xenophobia, anti-Westernism and adherence to pre-capitalist practices. This culture competes with its younger counterpart, the modernizing or reformist culture, which has its intellectual roots in the Enlightenment and liberalism. Apart from the dualist pattern there is also the ‘pendulum model’ which sees Greek history and culture as swinging between polarities: archaism/anachronism and modernization (Vassilis Vamvakas), individual and society (Vaggelis Hatzivasileiou), catastrophes and triumphs (Stahis Kalyvas). An alternative method of analysis, based on hybridity, does not highlight polarities or the struggle for the supremacy of modernizing culture but the in-between space which involves the tension and hydridization of competing cultures or opposites. The language reform of 1976 can serve as a case in point here. On the one hand, it could be seen as a victory of modernization and on the other hand as a rehabilitation of the underdog culture and its Romeic strand. It is also interesting to note that some of those who fought for the institutionalization of the demotic language resisted the introduction of the monotonic system in the early 1980s or agonized over the decline of linguistic standards.

You define the Metapolitefsi period as an era of identities, noting that identity issues unite both phases of this period. Can you tell us more about the concept of identity, how it was expressed during the Metapolitefsi era, and how it reflects current global cultural and political developments?

First, I should point out that a classic book Keywords (1976) by the British Marxist intellectual Raymond Williams did not contain an entry on identity which was added in the second posthumous edition (New Keywords, 2005). This suggests that the emphasis on identity is a relatively recent phenomenon, and its rise coincides with the post-junta period. In Greece the prominent role of identity in various forms resulted from the major shift from politics to culture and the disentanglement of group identities from political affiliations. After 1974, Greece opened to the world and renegotiated its position and its image by looking not only towards the West but also eastward and engaging with its forgotten Balkan and Ottoman pasts. The common denominator in the fundamental questions that preoccupied Greeks during the post-junta period (how the nation is defined; who owns the past; and how the past is remembered) is the quest for identity. As a result of the critical engagement with the past and its perceived loss of stability, questions were posed about identity more intensely than ever before. The thematic shift in contemporary Greek cinema away from the grand narratives of political history to concerns about identity, sexuality and family dynamics coincided with similar transitions in social movements. Queer culture gained in visibility, while homosexuality began to be perceived as an identity and no longer just a sexual practice. In conclusion, politics might help to divide the post-junta period into phases, culture and identity draw it together, acting as its overarching metaphors.

*Interview to Ioulia Livaditi

The post Rethinking Greece | Dimitris Tziovas on Greece in Transition: Identity, Culture, and Global Engagement appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

George Prevelakis is Professor Emeritus in Geopolitics at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris 1), Research Professor at CNRS (UMR Géographie-cités), Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hellenic American University and Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. He specializes in European, Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean Geopolitics, in Diasporas and in Physical Planning. After leaving Greece in 1984, he has occupied teaching and research positions in Paris, Baltimore, Boston and London. During the academic years 2003-2005 he served as the Constantine Karamanlis Chair in Hellenic and Southeastern European Studies at the Fletcher School (Tufts university). He has served twice, in 2013-2015 and 2019-2023 as Greece’s Ambassador to the OECD.

He has been active in international media and think tanks on questions related to Balkan security and Geopolitics and is a frequent op-ed contributor to the Athens dailies Kathimerini and Ta Nea.  Among his latest publications are, “Pourquoi une nouvelle Entente balkanique?” (2010), “Who are we? Geopolitics of the Greek identity” (2017), "Wooden Walls” ("Ξύλινα Τείχη," in Greek, 2020) and “In the OECD: Geopolitical Theory and Diplomatic Action” (2024).

In this interview with Rethinking Greece* professor Prevelakis explores the evolving landscape of geopolitics and its impact on international organizations, arguing that the era of globalization is receding, with non-economic factors like religion and geopolitical tensions regaining prominence. He advocates for a "new Western doctrine" that balances acknowledging Western contributions with historical reflection and cooperation. He highlights the growing importance of seas and oceans in economy and in geopolitical strategy and proposes that Europe embrace an "archipelago" model of interconnected entities linked by sea, pointing out that Greece could be playing a leading role in this future, due given its maritime geography, historical engagement with seafaring, and robust merchant marine. Professor Prevelakis also discusses demographic shifts as drivers of history and population geography as a significant long-term factor influencing the evolution of humankind. Finally, he argues that smaller nations like Greece can leverage multilateral organizations through bold strategies, an example of which is the establishment, during his tenure, of the OECD Population Center in Crete, as a critical institution to address global challenges related to population dynamics.

You have served two terms as the Ambassador of Greece to the OECD. In your book, “In the OECD: Geopolitical theory and diplomatic action” you highlight the importance of geopolitics in international relations. How does the primacy of geopolitics, and what you call the “revenge of history and politics” affect OECD’s mission and priorities?

There is a growing consensus among experts that the contemporary world is undergoing a period of profound transformation, precipitated by the election of Donald Trump but rooted in gradual developments over the preceding years. The post-Cold War era is coming to an end, giving way to a dramatic reversal of conditions and values.

The previous era was characterized by an increasing openness to global circulation. Individuals could travel with relative ease, capital flowed across national borders, commerce flourished, and information was exchanged with minimal restrictions. These developments were encapsulated by the concept of globalization, a phenomenon extensively theorized by scholars such as Francis Fukuyama. In 1989, at the height of these transformations, Fukuyama published his seminal essay The End of History, positing that ideological conflicts would wane and that the world would move towards political and economic homogenization. This idea suggested that the "End of History" would coincide with the "End of Geography," as globalization was expected to transcend national and cultural distinctions. In this envisioned world, adherence to rules would take precedence over the exercise of force, with the enforcement of these norms largely dependent on the actions of a benevolent superpower—the United States.

However, this ideological framework proved to be flawed. One of its consequences was the marginalization of traditional geopolitical approaches. This oversight contributed to several miscalculations and failures in Western interventions worldwide, particularly those led by the United States. To comprehend the complexities of contemporary global developments and to devise effective strategies, a balanced approach that integrates legal, economic, and geopolitical analyses is essential.

While globalization has yielded numerous benefits, including remarkable economic growth and a reduction of global inequalities, it has also generated significant challenges. New forms of inequality and exclusion have emerged, exacerbating socio-economic disparities. The multiple crises of the past decade can, in part, be attributed to the unintended consequences of unregulated global flows. In response, the world is now shifting in the opposite direction, transitioning from integration to fragmentation and diversification. Non-economic factors are playing an increasingly prominent role in shaping global dynamics. Religion, for instance, has re-emerged as a crucial force in both domestic and international politics.

This shift from an economic-centric discourse to one emphasizing geopolitics was not initially anticipated within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Along with a few colleagues, I sought to introduce geopolitical considerations into OECD discussions, often encountering resistance from an audience primarily composed of economists. However, ambassadors from countries that perceived themselves as directly threatened by post-imperial powers—such as Japan, Poland, and the Baltic states—were particularly receptive to these perspectives.

Despite the OECD’s predominant focus on non-geopolitical issues during my tenure as Ambassador, both the organization and its predecessor, the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), were originally conceived with a clear geopolitical rationale. Economic initiatives were not ends in themselves but rather means to achieve broader geopolitical objectives, including containing the Soviet Union and fostering positive relations with developing nations.

In the current global context, the OECD has the potential to play a pivotal role by re-engaging with its geopolitical foundations. This would not constitute a fundamental revision of its mission but rather a return to its original purpose, which had been overshadowed by the illusions of the past era. By embracing its geopolitical potential, the OECD can contribute more effectively to addressing the multifaceted challenges of today’s world.

The rise of China and other non-western powers is challenging the traditional dominance of the West; you argue that the world is entering an era of dichotomy between “the West and the rest” and you call for a ‘new Western doctrine’. What would this doctrine focus on? How would it work to ease the aforementioned division?

The relative economic weight of Western nations is diminishing, while many developing countries have experienced rapid economic growth. Consequently, the global economic balance of power is undergoing a significant transformation. Many non-Western countries increasingly assert their influence and express growing criticism and resentment towards Western powers.This critique is not without merit; historically, Western nations have often treated the rest of the world with exploitation, arrogance, and, at times, outright cruelty. However, while these grievances are justified, the resulting anger and resentment risk fostering division and could potentially lead to a breakdown of international cooperation.

A growing discourse surrounds the emergence of the so-called Global South, or even a broader Global South and East. This concept, rather than reflecting an empirical reality, appears to be constructed as a means of unifying opposition to Western dominance. Unlike the West, which has developed a degree of cohesion through institutions that facilitate cooperation, the Global South and East lack a comparable common framework. In fact, key nations such as China and India remain engaged in significant geopolitical conflicts. Given these internal divisions, it may be more accurate to refer to this grouping as the Rest rather than as a unified entity.

The increasing dichotomy between the West and the Rest presents significant risks for the World. Addressing this divide requires the development of a coherent ideological and political framework. A "new Western doctrine" should first and foremost adopt a balanced perspective on historical relations. It is essential to navigate between the extremes of traditional Western arrogance and the tendency to deconstruct Western history in a manner that disregards its significant contributions to human progress. In this regard, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) could provide an appropriate institutional setting for fostering such dialogue.

Given the multiple contemporary threats facing humanity—including existential risks—it is imperative to prioritize intellectual and political efforts aimed at fostering collaboration. Constructive engagement between the West and the Rest cannot be achieved without a well-conceived ideological and political foundation, supported by a conducive institutional framework. The persistence of aggressive, unilateral approaches to global challenges is unlikely to alleviate tensions. In contrast, a collective and cooperative strategy is more essential than ever in addressing the complexities of the modern international order -or disorder.

In your book “In the OECD: Geopolitical Theory and Diplomatic Action” you emphasize the growing importance of seas and oceans. Could you expand on that concept and outline its advantages?

The seas and oceans have played a fundamental role in human history. Naval battles have decisively influenced the rise and fall of empires. Through maritime routes, ideas have circulated globally, and religions have expanded their influence. The sea enabled the Greeks to extend their cultural model across the Mediterranean, laying the foundation for Western civilization. Spain, Portugal, England, France, and other European nations later replicated this Greek maritime and colonial expansion on a global scale due to their naval prowess.

Today, the significance of the sea is greater than ever before. In addition to its historical role in navigation and trade, technological progress and economic growth present new maritime challenges. The increasing ability to extract resources from greater oceanic depths has transformed the sea into not only a medium for transportation but also a significant source of valuable materials. Consequently, maritime domains are acquiring characteristics traditionally associated with land, leading to territorial disputes over maritime areas. The concept of the "territorialization of the sea" encapsulates this evolving reality, which has profoundly impacted geopolitical relationships, such as those between Greece and Turkey in recent decades.

The maritime economy is expanding at a much faster rate than that of continental regions. Food production, mineral extraction, and energy generation have become prominent additions to traditional maritime industries, such as transportation. The expansion of global trade in the era of globalization has led to remarkable growth in the merchant marine sector. The Greek-owned fleet, in particular, has benefited significantly from the new opportunities presented by a more interconnected world. Simultaneously, the merchant marine has played a structural role in globalization. The advent of containerization and technological advancements in shipping have exponentially increased the capacity for transporting energy and goods, facilitating the rapid economic growth associated with globalization. While globalization has largely resulted from political decisions aimed at reducing trade barriers, the efficiency and fluidity of maritime transportation have been crucial in enabling its success.

Despite its economic benefits, rapid global growth has led to severe environmental challenges, with the maritime domain playing a central role in these developments. On the one hand, the world's oceans face significant pollution, much of which originates from land-based sources. The increasing concentration of populations in coastal cities has exacerbated this environmental degradation. Beyond pollution, climate change also poses a serious threat to oceanic stability. Rising temperatures alter the physical conditions of marine ecosystems, triggering a cascade of climatic and environmental disruptions.

The growing strategic importance of maritime domains, combined with shifting geopolitical trends, has intensified global focus on naval power. The principle of freedom of the seas, once considered secure, is increasingly contested. Recent crises, such as Houthi attacks on more than 60 vessels in the Red Sea, the impact of the Ukrainian conflict on grain shipments through the Black Sea, and U.S. President Donald Trump's remarks regarding the Panama Canal, underscore the fragility of global maritime security. These challenges have profound implications for the global economy.

The control of sea lanes and the strategic use of naval power—whether for offensive or defensive purposes—have long been fundamental to military strategy. However, in the emerging post-globalization era, naval capabilities are gaining even greater prominence. Heightened geopolitical tensions have led major powers, including the United States and China, to significantly expand their naval investments.

Finally, an essential yet often overlooked dimension of maritime significance is its role in digital infrastructure. A vast amount of global data transmission occurs via undersea cables that connect continents and nations. This digital interconnectivity further reinforces the strategic and economic importance of the maritime domain in the contemporary world.

In summary, the seas and oceans are central to global economic, environmental, and geopolitical dynamics. As new technological and strategic developments emerge, maritime domains will continue to shape the course of international relations and economic development in the twenty-first century.

Why do you advocate for Europe embracing the "archipelago" concept of interconnected entities linked by sea? How do you see Greece leveraging its maritime heritage and geographic position to lead in this paradigm shift?

With the exception of certain seafaring nations such as Britain, the geographical perspectives of most Europeans have been predominantly continental. The role of Germany in shaping geographical theory cannot be underestimated. Maybe under this influence, the European project, which emerged after the Second World War within the strategic and geopolitical framework of the transatlantic alliance, has gradually assumed a more continental character. Following the end of the Cold War, numerous Central European countries joined the European Union. Alongside the reunification of Germany and Brexit, these geopolitical transformations have significantly altered the European Union’s spatial configuration. Consequently, the Union’s center of gravity has increasingly shifted toward the east and the north, distancing itself from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

This ongoing trend toward the continentalization of Europe may become even more pronounced if the war in Ukraine concludes with a relative victory for Russia and if the United States adopts a more isolationist foreign policy. Through both gradual and abrupt changes, the European project risks diverging from its foundational values.

Historically, Europe’s global influence in the 19th century and its role as a pioneer of civilization were largely shaped by its engagement with the seas and oceans. Europe’s openness, its spirit of adventure, and the curiosity of its populations were fundamental to the development of a distinctive culture—diverse yet unified by an outward-looking perspective.

Geography has played a crucial role in shaping this historical European trajectory, a process that can be traced back to Ancient Greece. Contrary to the modern perception of Greece as a land-based entity, the Ancient Greek world was a network of small regional entities interconnected by the sea. This spatial organization reflected the archipelagic nature of Greek civilization. The Ancient Greek Archipelago was not solely composed of islands but also included coastal plains separated by mountains and linked by maritime routes.

Europe has largely followed the Greek model. From a physical geographical perspective, it also possesses an archipelagic structure. The European continent, particularly to the east of the Elbe River, consists of peninsulas and regions connected to the seas and oceans via river networks, thereby embodying an amphibious character. Much like Greece, this archipelagic Europe has historically been politically fragmented. This division fostered a spirit of competition, exploration, and freedom. Conversely, the more continental values that characterize the eastern parts of Europe, including the vast Russian landmass, have traditionally been more conservative, hierarchical, and less inclined toward adventurous endeavors.

At the current European crossroads, the question of choosing between a continental or maritime orientation has resurfaced. The contemporary trend toward global fragmentation and increasing competition among major geopolitical blocs may suggest that a continental stance offers greater security. This dilemma echoes the ancient debate attributed to Themistocles: should the "wooden walls" serve as a fortification behind which protection is sought, or as ships that provide mobility and opportunity? Europe now faces a critical decision—whether to capitalize on the growing importance of maritime dynamics or to retreat behind its continental boundaries. Will it position itself as a continent or as an archipelago?

This debate holds particular significance for Greece. Given its maritime geography, historical engagement with seafaring, and robust merchant marine, Greece is naturally aligned with an archipelagic vision of Europe. From a strictly geopolitical perspective, however, Greece occupies a precarious position between its traditional maritime allies (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) and the nations that may assume a dominant role in a continentalized Europe (Germany and Russia), with which Greece maintains strong ties through its membership in the European Union and religious links.

Nonetheless, Greece has the potential to play a pivotal role in shaping the future character of Europe. Its historical connections to the wider oceanic world, its longstanding tradition of dialogue with other Mediterranean civilizations, and its diasporic culture equip Greece with unique capabilities to contribute to Europe's openness.

Additionally, the significance of the Greek merchant marine provides the country with a strategic advantage in both global and European affairs. However, to fully leverage its archipelagic strengths, Greece must work to mitigate the continental tendencies embedded within its state culture.

You consider population movements as the driving force of history. What are the main challenges demographic issues pose in this current conjecture?  Considering the growing significance of diasporas, how can Greece better engage with its global diaspora to support its geopolitical and economic objectives?

Population geography is arguably one of the most significant long-term factors influencing the evolution of humankind. Demographic developments, closely linked to physical geography, health conditions, migration patterns, and population densities, account for many of the forces shaping historical trends. These trends manifest in both short-term phenomena, such as the impact of invasions, and long-term transformations, exemplified by the rise of historical powers like ancient Egypt or contemporary China.

In the present era, one of the most pressing challenges is the unprecedented speed of demographic change, which rapidly alters established equilibria. A striking example is the demographic shift between Europe and Africa. In 1950, Europe's population was more than twice that of Africa. Today, Africa’s population is approximately double that of Europe, and projections for 2100 suggest that Africa may have between five and six times as many inhabitants as Europe. Demographic trends are dynamic and often unpredictable, influenced not only by material conditions, which are relatively easier to forecast, but also by cultural factors, such as matrimonial behaviors, which shape population growth and structure.

The imbalances created by rapid demographic shifts generate migration pressures. Population movements are also driven by climatic factors and geopolitical tensions. Migrations are contributing to instability within host societies. This phenomenon is reflected in the growing support for right-wing political parties in various regions.

In the previous era, that of globalization, migrations played a significant role in fostering economic growth in host countries, despite political tensions. Diasporas have become increasingly important in the global economy, both as results and as agents of globalization. However, it remains uncertain to what extent this trend will be affected by political decisions influenced by rising xenophobic attitudes.

Given these dynamics, it is evident that population challenges are critical for the future. There is an urgent need for comprehensive research and analysis of population dynamics to formulate effective national and global policies. Such policies should aim to mitigate tensions, preserve the benefits of migration, and develop strategies to protect vulnerable populations.

Regarding the Greek diaspora, numerous efforts have been made to integrate it into the strategic initiatives of the Greek state. However, most of these efforts have not yielded significant results. Notably, little research has been conducted to analyze the reasons for these failures. Instead, similar strategies and rhetoric are repeatedly employed, often leading to predictable outcomes. The decision to live in the diaspora frequently stems from dissatisfaction with conditions in Greece. Consequently, unless these underlying conditions change, the diaspora's potential contributions will remain constrained. In this context, the issue of meritocracy is particularly critical in shaping the relationship between the diaspora and Greek academic institutions.

Despite the challenges posed by state policies, the Greek diaspora continues to make substantial and positive contributions to Greece’s broader trajectory. It fosters openness within Greek society and enhances the perception of Greeks—and, at times, Greece itself—within host countries.

In your book, you showcase how a smaller nation like Greece can effectively leverage its position within multilateral organizations like the OECD, emphasizing the importance of bold initiatives, and the "strategy of the weak." Could you expand on that strategy?

In a multilateral organization such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the principle of equality among member states is firmly established, irrespective of population size or economic strength. All Permanent Representatives possess an equal voice and the same capacity to take initiatives. However, while no external barriers hinder member states from proposing bold initiatives or influencing the strategic direction of the Organization, internal constraints often arise. Smaller member states, in particular, may experience a sense of inferiority that leads to self-censorship.

Paradoxically, smaller member states have a greater need to adopt bold strategies compared to their larger counterparts. Only through such an approach can they overcome their inherent disadvantages. The concept of a "strategy of the weak"— borrowed from guerrilla warfare—can be applied to diplomacy. In the absence of substantial political or economic weight to rival that of larger states, smaller nations must act in unexpected ways, leveraging surprise to counterbalance their limitations. These initiatives must be striking in order to attract attention and maximize their impact.

The objective of such initiatives is not only to secure strategic advantages but also to enhance the country’s image. A pertinent example is Greece's bid for the position of OECD Secretary-General through the candidacy of Anna Diamantopoulou. Although Greece was ultimately unsuccessful, despite Diamantopoulou’s strong performance, this effort was not in vain. The campaign significantly altered perceptions of Greece within and beyond the OECD at a time when the country’s international reputation was at a low point. Greece transitioned from being seen as a passive recipient of foreign support and advice to a nation actively seeking leadership roles within the Organization. This ambitious campaign laid the groundwork for two subsequent successful initiatives that further enhanced Greece’s image: Kyriakos Pierrakakis’s election as President of the Global Strategy Group and the OECD Council’s approval of Greece’s proposal to establish the OECD Crete Population Center.

In the contemporary global landscape, a country’s image plays a crucial role in shaping economic, political, and geopolitical decisions. In the economic domain, investment decisions are particularly susceptible to perceptions and reputational considerations. Similarly, political and geopolitical choices are often influenced by subjective evaluations. By navigating an international organization with creativity and strategic acumen, a country can actively shape its global image. However, the strategic imperatives of smaller and larger countries differ fundamentally. While larger states tend to adopt more conservative approaches to safeguard their established positions, smaller states must assume greater risks to distinguish themselves and emerge from the constraints of relative obscurity.

One your biggest achievements as Greece's Ambassador to the OECD was the establishment of the OECD Center for Populations in Crete. How does the Center aim to address global challenges related to population dynamics, and what contributions will it bring to the OECD's existing work? What benefits does Greece, and the island of Crete, anticipate from hosting this center?

As previously discussed, population dynamics represent one of the most significant—if not the most critical—challenges facing contemporary societies and the global community both today and in the future. However, there is currently no institutional framework capable of examining and conceptualizing this issue in a holistic manner. Various aspects of population studies are addressed in separate disciplinary contexts. For instance, demography is studied independently from migration, while the economic consequences of population decline on the workforce are analyzed in a different academic field than the political implications of migration. There is a lack of a comprehensive perspective on the spatial distribution of populations, their dynamics, and migratory flows. Furthermore, cultural aspects are not sufficiently integrated with economic conditions, particularly in cases where demographic expansion occurs without corresponding economic growth. Finally, no systematic provisions exist to address emergencies affecting populations under stress or persecution.

Given the vast scope of this field, the need for a centralized hub to integrate the study of various facets of population challenges is increasingly urgent. This necessity led to the proposal of establishing such an institution in Greece. Any new institution requires a strong symbolic foundation, and Crete was identified as an ideal reference point for a global population center. Positioned between Europe, which faces a declining population, and Africa, which is experiencing rapid population growth, Crete symbolizes the essential connection between different demographic trends worldwide. Historically, Crete has served as a cultural crossroads, having been inhabited or influenced by Minoans, Mycenaeans, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Venetians, Ottomans, Jews, and others, making it a powerful emblem of coexistence. Additionally, Crete occupies a significant place in human history and is recognized as a cradle of maritime navigation.

The OECD Crete Population Center, while situated in Greece, is not a Greek institution. This arrangement aligns with OECD principles, which dictate that its centers operate under OECD management and leverage its intellectual and political resources without becoming « nationalised ». Greece’s role is to serve as the host nation, facilitating the center’s operations. For the Crete Population Center to attain global significance, it must fully engage OECD resources, ensuring that it fulfills its intended role on an international scale.

Greece and Crete stand to benefit from the OECD Crete Population Center only if it evolves into a genuinely international hub. The annual conference that the center is mandated to organize must develop into a major global event in order to attract significant international attention to Greece and Crete. Achieving this objective, however, requires substantial resource mobilization by the OECD, which, at present, appears to be insufficient. Consequently, the OECD Crete Population Center currently relies on Greece’s limited financial, intellectual and human resources. By tolerating thus the « nationalisation » of its Crete Population Center, the Secretariat of the OECD has undermined the decision of its Council to create it.

President Trump’s recent statements regarding Gaza have forcefully revived the debate on population transfers, a historically significant issue that gained prominence following major global conflicts. Notable examples include the Greek-Turkish population exchange after the First World War, the large-scale transfers of German populations following the Second World War, and the displacement associated with the partition of India.

In this context, a well-established and influential OECD Crete Population Center would have served as an appropriate forum for such discussions. Had it been developed as originally envisioned, Crete might today be a focal point of international diplomatic attention.

*Interview to: Ioulia Livaditi

The post Rethinking Greece | George Prevelakis on geopolitics, OECD, population dynamics and an “archipelago Europe” appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

Dimitrios Koutsogiannis is Professor Emeritus of Educational Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and associate president of the Center for the Greek Language. His research interests and publications focus on teaching of Modern Greek as a first and second language, educational discourse analysis, teacher’s training, and digital literacies. He has been a research associate at the Centre for the Greek Language since 1997, responsible for the development of digital resources for the Greek language (e.g., Portal for the Greek Language). His recent research is related to the teaching of Modern Greek in the Diaspora, and the main conclusions are published in the 2024 book "Διδασκαλία της ελληνικής γλώσσας στη διασπορά: μια ολιστική προσέγγιση" [Teaching the Greek language in the diaspora: A holistic approach].

In his interview for Rethinking Greece* Professor Koutsogiannis discusses the digital tools developed by the Centre for the Greek Language (CGL), its initiatives for teaching Greek abroad, the certification of of attainment in Greek, the profile of people interested in learning Greek and finally, on the need draw up a comprehensive policy for the Greek language and its teaching outside Greece.

Since 2017, February 9th has been designated as International Greek Language Day. Would you like to share some introductory thoughts on this celebration and its impact over the years?

The experience so far points to several positive outcomes. On the occasion of this celebration, several interesting events are held, showcasing aspects of the history as well as of the present of the Greek language. We also see numerous engaging activities taking place in schools, mainly diaspora schools, as well as scientific seminars, debates and conferences in academic institutions. All these events and activities are encouraging and constructive, as they did not exist prior to the establishment of this international day of tribute.

On the other hand, there is a significant risk that the content of these discussions and events might be limited to the familiar rhetoric regarding the Greek language, its history, and its importance. One rarely sees serious analyses placing Greek within the modern global linguistic ecology, and even more rarely the formulation of proposals at the level of language policy. I would say that this day needs to be a day of both reflection and planning, especially for institutions and individuals directly or indirectly involved with the language, in terms of what has been done and what needs to be done in the future. Therefore, I consider this interview to be an important opportunity to discuss specific issues and initiatives of the Centre for the Greek Language (CGL), and I would like to thank you for this opportunity.

The CGL also deals with the examinations for the Certification of Attainment in Greek, a programme that commenced in 1999. How has this initiative progressed? Can you provide us with some quantitative and qualitative data?

Yes, with pleasure.

Indeed, this initiative, which began in 1999, has grown into one of our most important programs and a key pillar of our policy for the Greek language. The graph below illustrates the quantitative progress of participation in the Greek language certification exams. We can see that this programme set off in 1999 with very few candidates and a limited number of examination centres. Today, we have 160 examination centres worldwide, even in countries one wouldn't expect, such as Japan, China, Congo, and Tanzania. The graph also clearly marks a continuous increase in the number of candidates, with the only period of stagnation or even decline being during the pandemic (2020-2021). As shown in the chart, the number of candidates in 2024 reached almost 9,000. 

Of particular interest is the info on the age of the candidates[1]. Our data (see next table) indicates that the largest percentage, as might be expected, consists of school-age children (8-18 years old). This critical age group accounts for more than one-third of our candidates. However, there is also a significant percentage of candidates over the age of 35, meaning there is also considerable interest from older age groups in learning the Greek language.

An important aspect is also the profile of the candidates in relation to their connection with Greece. Our analysis shows that the majority (52%) of those taking the exams have some biographical connection to Greece, compared to 48% who do not.

An important aspect is also the profile of the candidates in relation to their connection with Greece. Our analysis shows that the majority (52%) of those taking the exams have some biographical connection to Greece, compared to 48% who do not.

The Certification of Attainment in Greek is a significant programme for several reasons, and I will mention two here. One is that it encourages children to learn Greek in order to use this certificate – which is based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and is recognized both within and in many countries outside Europe – as a qualification for further studies, particularly in educational systems that recognize and support language skills and multilingualism. This is a particularly important incentive for children of the diaspora, who, by learning Greek, not only gain a better command of their heritage language but also acquire an additional qualification that they can use in their studies. The second reason is that it provides a clear framework for teachers and parents to understand their children’s progress in learning the Greek language.

Which groups of people are interested in learning Greek? What is the profile of those who seek to acquire the CGL Greek language certification?

According to our exam data, the number of foreigners learning Greek is significant. As mentioned earlier, it is estimated at 48% of our sample. The two following charts provide some interesting data related to your question. The first bar-chart shows the place of residence of those who do not have any familial connection with Greece and participate in the Greek language certification exams.

It is evident that most of them live primarily in Cyprus, followed by Greece. Knowledge of Greek is thus clearly very useful for them for both social and professional reasons. After Greece and Cyprus, the majority of non-Greek candidates come from the USA, Italy, and Germany, followed by smaller numbers from Russia, Turkey, France, the United Kingdom, etc.

The biggest difference between this group and those of the diaspora is that they tend to learn Greek at an older age, as can be seen from the table below. In contrast to the findings mentioned earlier where the majority of examination candidates are aged 12-18, here we observe that the majority are aged between 27-45.

The above data gives us an initial insight as to your question. However, the issue is not completely covered by our data, primarily because it is only quantitative but also because it is based on those who participate in the certification exams. There are, obviously, thousands of others who are not interested in taking the exam or obtaining certification. In order to get a fuller picture, focused research, both quantitative and qualitative, is needed to attain in greater depth the profile of these individuals, which may vary from country to country and also by age.

Can you briefly tell us about the goals, actions, as well as digital tools the Centre for Greek Language uses, such as the Portal for the Greek Language?

Yes, with pleasure.

At the Centre for the Greek Language we realized quite early, from the end of the 1990s, that the internet was creating a new reality in the field of languages, which is why we made a systematic effort to adapt to the new reality in communication. As a result, the CGL has developed scientifically valid online environments that provide reference tools and a wealth of linguistic material for all periods (ancient, medieval, modern Greek) and fields (language, literature) related to the Greek language and its teaching. The best-known of these are the "Portal for the Greek Language" and the "Digital Resources for the Greek Language". Through these initiatives, we address a significant condition of the digital age, i.e., that Greek speakers have at their disposal reliable platforms for their daily communication and educational practices. It is no coincidence that these platforms have widespread acceptance and high traffic.  

It is important to highlight that our platforms are open and easily accessible from anywhere in the world. In fact, without these digital resources, the online presence of the Greek language would be significantly limited. Furthermore, as the internet plays an increasingly vital role in nearly every aspect of daily life, this absence would be especially harmful as it would deprive the Greek language of a crucial and widely used space for application and growth.

What are the specific challenges of preserving the Greek language for the diaspora? Are there any CGL initiatives for teaching Greek abroad?

There are several CGL initiatives in this direction by way of specific programmes that have been or are being implemented. I will mention two recent ones. As of this year, we began offering remote Greek language teaching courses and we will systematically expand this initiative, the significance of which is obvious, over the coming years.

Another exciting initiative is the establishment of the international group of special scientific interest D.EL.EXO. in 2022. It focuses on the teaching of Greek outside of Greece and provides the organizational framework for developing and advancing debate, criticism and research related to the teaching of Greek worldwide. In other words, it could be said that it is the digital platform for bringing together the scientific forces involved in the teaching of Greek globally. This team has already launched many initiatives, organized two seminars, and is organizing a large international conference (5-7 February 2026) on the teaching of Greek around the world which will involve scientists, educators, and Greek communities.

Additionally, we are already in the process of planning the creation of a digital environment for teaching the Greek language, which will consist of a modern educational teaching platform, accompanied by an abundance of digital language resources that can be used in teaching. At the same time, we have already worked on the utilization of Artificial Intelligence in the teaching of Greek. These are projects that are expected to be ready within the next three years.

I would also like to address the first part of your question, regarding the specific challenges that the preservation of the Greek language for the diaspora involves. This major issue was addressed in a recent study we conducted with children and parents from the diaspora in Australia and Germany, which was funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI). In the volume "Διδασκαλία της ελληνικής γλώσσας στη διασπορά: μια ολιστική προσέγγιση" that is based on this research, we not only highlight the significant challenges that exist but also lay out specific proposals for teaching the Greek language in the diaspora. Hopefully, these will be considered.

What kind of interventions would be useful for a language, especially one with relatively few native speakers like Greek, to survive in today's globalized digital environment?

This is a critical question and exactly what has guided our actions over the past 20 years. It is now evident that the existence of reliable linguistic resources on the internet is an indispensable requirement for any language, especially for less spoken languages such as Greek. One only has to consider that, as we mentioned earlier, if we removed the tools and resources freely available through the CGL, the needs arising for learning and teaching of Greek would be covered -to a significant degree- by subjective personal opinions expressed on social networks.

However, digital tools alone are not enough; the initiatives and actions undertaken and those we are planning are not enough. It is time to draw up a comprehensive policy for the Greek language and its teaching outside Greece. Such a policy must begin with an analysis of the global linguistic context, place Greek within this framework, register existing structures (both digital and conventional, inside and outside Greece – Cyprus), institutions, and practices (e.g., teaching), and formulate proposals to be implemented by competent ministries and as well as agencies outside Greece. I believe that in the context of such an effort, cooperation with Cyprus should be pursued, as we share common goals and our cooperation so far[2] has been highly productive.

* Interview to Ioulia Livaditi / Translated from Greek to English: Magda Hatzopoulou

[1] In each table, N denotes the number on which the results are based. This number varies either because some candidates submitted handwritten applications at the local examination centres or/and because answering was not mandatory.

[2] A five-year memorandum of cooperation for Greek language learning is being implemented between the Ministry of Education of Greece and the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Cyprus.

The post Rethinking Greece|Dimitrios Koutsogiannis on teaching Modern Greek in the current global linguistic environment appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

Panagiotis Roilos is George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Professor Roilos's wide-ranging research interests include Greek literature (from antiquity to the present), European aestheticism (with a focus on Greek and British literature), the Enlightenment, German Romanticism and the Classics, premodern and modern critical theory, historical and cognitive anthropology, philosophy and rhetoric, comparative oral poetics, diaspora, and cultural politics. In 2022, Prof. Roilos was elected President of the European Cultural Centre of Delphi.

Among his major publications are the books C. P. Cavafy: The Economics of Metonymy (2009), Amphoteroglossia: A Poetics of the Twelfth-Century Medieval Greek Novel (2005), and Towards a Ritual Poetics (2003; co-author with D. Yatromanolakis). His current book-length projects include “Abducting Athena: The Nazis and the Greeks” and “Neomedieval Metacapitalism”.

Professor Roilos spoke to Rethinking Greece,* on issues as varied as the formation of modern Greek identity during the 16^th century, Cavafy’s idiosyncratic discourse,  Nazis’ appropriation of Greek antiquity, the unprecedented impact AI will have on political institutions, our language as a bastion against hegemonizing tendencies, the present and future of Modern Greek Studies, and finally, on his plans for this year's Delphi Dialogues.

You’ve suggested that the roots of modern Hellenism can be traced back to the 16th century. Could you expand on the historical elements that mark this period as a starting point?

Let me repeat what I have written in one article on the topic. There, I have argued the following: “The Fall of Constantinople gave rise to, or rather accelerated, an intense process of what, adapting Gregory Bateson’s concept of “schismogenesis” to the Greek case, I would call the ‘schismogenetic formation of early modern Greek ethnic and cultural identity.’ This transitional process unfolded when Greek Orthodox populations of the former Byzantine Empire, especially the Greek speaking ones, would gradually forge, or rather further corroborate, a sense of a common cultural and historical heritage, probably of a distinct ethnic identity, too, by strongly counter-distinguishing themselves from what at the time they perceived as their quintessentially cultural and ethnic “other,” the Ottoman Turks.” Already in the late 15^th c. and throughout the 16^th and 17^th c. Greek intellectuals, mainly of the diaspora, cultivated a cultural politics that aimed at 1. promoting the view that contemporary Greeks are the legitimate heirs to classical antiquity and 2. on the basis of this valuable cultural capital, instigating (and at times co-ordinating) the Philhellenic sentiments (occasionally, initiatives, too) of their European interlocutors. In that sense, I have contended that the educational and cultural political movement orchestrated mainly by Adamantios Korais and his associates finds a significant parallel in the 16^th century, a parallel that is unfortunately almost entirely neglected in recent and current scholarship.  

You've written extensively on C.P. Cavafy, including your book “The Economics of Metonymy”. What do you find most enduring about Cavafy’s poetry? What do you think of modern approaches that examine his work through lenses like queer theory?

All approaches are legitimate and welcome to the extent that they do to not lay claim to Cavafy’s own work and thought, or to absolute and exclusive interpretive authority. Queer theory can provide very interesting insights into Cavafy’s poetry and ideology; in fact, it has done so in certain cases. In the book you mention I discuss systematically and holistically Cavafy’s idiosyncratic economic ideas, sexuality, poetic and ideological discourses. Cavafy developed a discourse that, by adopting “prosaic” discursive modes and promoting what I call “liminal” themes, transcended his contemporary poetic and ideological restrictions. This is what in general makes his poetry especially topical even today.   

Your project “Abducting Athena,” on the Nazis’ appropriation of Greek antiquity for their own cultural propaganda sounds fascinating. Could you give us a preview this study? How you believe it can inform the way we approach classical Greece?

This is the topic of a course I’ll offer at Harvard this coming spring. The barbaric arbitrariness of the sustained “state of emergency” that consolidated and promoted the Nazi regime involved a monstrous misrepresentation and abuse of the cultural capital of aspects of Greek antiquity. It constitutes a frightening example of how racism, sexism, populism, ultra-nationalism, the barbaric dogma of “white supremacy” may be complemented and “validated” by a propagandistic, systematic appropriation and misinterpretation of cultural and historical heritage with a view to manipulating and controlling huge parts of the population, to rendering them to a homogenized and disenfranchised mass.    

You are currently completing a book on digital post-humanism and democracy entitled “Neomedieval Metacapitalism,” which is concerned with the impact of the prevalence of technology and AI in our modern democracies. What challenges does post-humanism pose for democracy?

In this book I explore in detail the concept of “neomedieval metacapitalism,” which I introduced in articles and lectures several years ago.  I have put forward this concept to describe what, to my mind, constitutes an important—but by and large unnoticed—paradox: the persistence in the fourth industrial revolution of deep structures of thought that are supposed to go back or be similar to corresponding perceptual patterns usually associated with the Middle Ages. To repeat what I have argued elsewhere: “By and large the digitization of many sectors of human interaction and their restructuring with the help of AI often entail the distancing of individuals from their surroundings, from their world, and from nature itself, while also developing a sense of an essentially non-transcendental reality which, paradoxically, transcends individual perceptual abilities and purviews—hence its quasi-metaphysical character.”

This marks a cosmogonic development in the history of humanity, which will have an unprecedented impact on the ways in which political institutions operate and on civil and human rights. Especially democratic polities have no excuse to not protect those rights from their potential subversion and restriction entailed by the accumulation of technological, and concomitant political and economic power, in the hands of the few ones who have access to centers of decision-making in these sectors.     

What is your perspective on the current state and future direction of Modern Greek Studies in U.S. universities? What are emerging opportunities or challenges you feel will shape the field in the coming years?

Modern Greek Studies should dynamically and confidently converse with other fields, including developments in major current developments in cultural theory. Such creative dialogues should not neglect the comprehensive study and teaching of all centuries of modern Greek culture and history. Presentism is by no means an interpretive, scholarly, or educational panacea. Just the opposite: it’s an easy, more often than not simplistic, and potentially dangerous “solution.”

You are the President of The European Cultural Center of Delphi. Your initiative, the Delphi Cultural Dialogues, have become a vital part of the Center’s programming. How did it come to life, and what are the key goals you aim to achieve through these dialogues?  Could you share any themes you’re excited to explore in the Delphi Cultural Dialogues 2025?

It was a great honor and responsibility for me to succeed Professor Hélène Ahrweiler, an iconic academic figure in Europe, to the Presidency of that prestigious European Cultural Center. My main goal has been to make Delphi a "navel" of contemporary culture and thought. The Delphi Dialogues is one of the new international institutions I recently established. They aim at shedding new light on thorny and pressing issues that our world is facing today: for instance, AI and Democracy, technology and culture, environmental crisis, refugee crisis, etc.

Every summer some of the world's leading and most impactful thinkers and scholars come to Delphi and engage in highly original, cross-disciplinary dialogues. The Delphi Dialogues have began to establish themselves as a major international institution in contemporary thought. Their global impact has so far been immense: I should only note that the Second Delphi Dialogues were watched online by more than 190.000 (one hundred ninety thousand) people from all over the world!. This coming summer the Third Delphi Dialogues will focus on biopolitics, bioethics, and democracy.

 In an increasingly globalized world, how do you see modern Greek culture and identity evolving? Are there unique contributions or challenges Greece faces in navigating its identity on an international stage?

No “identity” is, can, or should be “pure.” And, to a great extent, almost all sorts of “identity” tend to be constructed, habitually formed, adopted, and performed. This also means that in general there is nothing by definition “unique” or “exclusive” to the challenges that Greece is facing in today’s globalized world. To my mind, one of the most pressing cultural challenges that very many parts of the world today, Greece included, face is the threat of cultural (and, as a result, ideological, behavioral, and sociopolitical) homogenization and hegemonization mainly by dominant, i.e. Anglosaxonic, cultural industries and modes of thought. As a vehicle not only of practical communication but also of what I call “historical and cultural mythemes,” language constitutes a powerful bastion against such hegemonizing tendencies.      

* Interview to: Ioulia Livaditi

* Featured photo © AMA-MPA

The post Rethinking Greece | Panagiotis Roilos: “Language constitutes a powerful bastion against hegemonizing tendencies” appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

Katerina Lagos is Professor of History at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS), USA. Her interests are focused on the interwar Greece, minorities, and the Metaxas dictatorship, and her more recent publication is The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936-1941 (2023). Vangelis Calotychos is Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at Brown University, where he teaches courses in comparative literature, cultural studies, and reception studies. His most recent monograph, The Balkan Prospect Identity, Culture, and Politics in Greece after 1989 (2013) has won the Edmund Keeley Prize.

Professors Lagos and Calotychos are the President and Executive Director respectively of the the Modern Greek Studies Association (MGSA) an international organization that fosters and advances Modern Greek Studies in North America. Connecting scholars, educators, and students worldwide, the MGSA fosters interdisciplinary research, dialogue, and collaboration. It organizes conferences, publishes the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, and supports academic initiatives in the field. This October, the MGSA’s 28^th international symposium, took place at Princeton University, gathering modern Greek scholars from around the world to explore contemporary topics in modern Greek studies and share cutting-edge research on Greece's history and society.

Professors Lagos and Calotychos spoke to Rethinking Greece* on Modern Greek Studies Association's mission and activities, the multi- and inter-disciplinary aspect or Modern Greek Studies, the growth of interest in Diaspora studies and in the Greek Diaspora , the era of Metapolitefsi, reading neo-Hellenism through the lens of postcolonial critique and finally, the opportunities and challenges in the field of Modern Greek Studies today.

The MGSA symposiums have evolved significantly over the years, from focusing on modern Greek literature to examining themes like civil war, colonialism and migration. Could you walk us through MGSA’s history, mission and activities?

Katerina Lagos: The first MGSA symposium was focused on Greek language and literature and was also held at Princeton University (coincidentally where the 2024 symposium was just held). The title of the symposium was “Modern Greek Literature and its European Background.” Since then, the MGSA has taken on quite controversial topics. One of the leading symposia occurred in 1978 at The American University (Washington, D.C.) with the title “Greece in the 1940s”. The symposium focused on the Greek Civil War and broke new ground on this highly contentious and politically charged topic. At the time, this topic was not discussed at Greek universities so having the MGSA take on the Civil War was quite bold. Since then, the MGSA has explored a wide variety of controversial and less-controversial topics in a growing array of scholarly disciplines. The diversity of presentation topics is welcome in the association, and this is reflective of the expansion of scholarly disciplines that have emerged.

Vangelis Calotychos: Since 1995, the MGSA’s biennial symposium has been open theme. In other words, our Program Committee welcomes abstract proposals from scholars presenting their current research in all areas of Modern Greek Studies, though we also highlight each symposium certain topical, pressing, or commemorative themes. This year, for example, fifty years since the Turkish invasion in Cyprus, our keynote address was delivered by Professor Elizabeth A. Davis, anthropologist from Princeton, who focused “On the Uses and Abuses of a History of Conflict: Context & Recursion in Cyprus, 2024.” In all, our recent symposium hosted by the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton featured over 160 speakers representing multiple disciplines and speaking on a wide array of topics. The strength of our field has always been its multi- and inter-disciplinary aspect. In keeping with our strong desire to support graduate students, adjunct lecturers, and junior scholars from outside North America, the MGSA joined the host institution and other sponsors to offer financial assistance to 45 graduate students and over 20 scholars, many from Greece and Cyprus. For many, after covid, it was their first international, in-person conference.

This year marks the 50th anniversary since the fall of the military junta and the restauration of democracy in Greece. The concept of the "Metapolitefsi" and its impact on Greek society and culture was central to many discussions in the 28th MGSA Symposium panels. How do you think the cultural and political shifts of the post-junta period continue to shape contemporary Greece?

KL: It was rewarding to see so many panels focusing on the “Metapolitefsi” and its legacy on Greek society and politics. For over two decades, the immediate impact of the post-junta period dominated the historical narrative. From Andreas Papandreou’s “America out” to banning the police from entering universities, this was a period of reaction to the events of the junta and post-Civil War period in Greece. Certain aspects of the period have remained in place – such as the banning of the military in politics and the legalization of the KKE – that are a positive development in the country’s evolution. The PASOK years also reflect this reaction and much of the social legislation is reflective of this: separation of church and state, full legalization of abortion, etc. However, as much as the 1970s-1990s represent this reaction, I think that Greek economic crisis (2009-2015) has changed the paradigm of politics and has led Greece to a new chapter in its history. Both the Metapolitefsi and post-junta period can now be analyzed critically and less polemically. 

Some of the panels of the Symposium concentrated on the transnational and diasporic studies, a field that has seen significant growth. What is the contribution of this diasporic studies to our understanding of Greek diasporic/global identity? What new directions do you see emerging in the way Greek communities abroad are understood and represented?

KL: In the past, diaspora studies have typically presented Greek emigration as a one-way movement with Greeks embarking to destinations around the world. Scholars have sought to identify, explain, and compare these communities. One of the challenges in recent years was to establish a clear definition of the term Greek diaspora. More recently, the phenomena of Greeks returning to Greece has added a new layer of complexity to this issue. There has been a growing interest in diaspora communities beyond that of the United States, Canada, and Australia. Greater attention needs to be given to Greek emigration to sub-Saharan Africa. The Greek immigrants did very well financially as they established companies and brought technical expertise to these African countries.

VC: This interest in the Greek diaspora has steadily grown since the early 2000s. Our Transnational Studies Committee has steadfastly updated and curated a Greek American Studies Research portal that lists and describes research, activities, and resources in the field of Greek American Studies. Notably, three consecutive recent winners of our MGSA Karagiannaki Edited Book Prize have been focused on Greek American diaspora issues. Meanwhile, our Transnational Committee is broadening its base by strengthening collaborative work undertaken by Modern Greek Studies programs globally. To this end, a fund for the support of initiatives in Modern Greek Studies—the MGSA Innovation Fund—is open to members representing academic programs and nonprofits worldwide, and not only in north America. Lastly, we have just advertised a new grant supporting research in Greek American Studies, the The Harry J. Psomiades Research Grant.

Post-colonial critique, such as professor Herzfeld‘s “crypto-colonialism” concept and professor Hamilakis’s call to “decolonize archeology” is an increasingly strong trend in modern humanities. In the MGSA symposium you featured a panel on the project “Decolonize Hellas.” Could you tell us more about how post-colonial theory informs modern Greek studies and what are the themes this approach touches upon?

VC: Yes, a session on the “Decolonize Hellas” initiative was one of four special, lunchtime sessions at this year’s symposium. In fact, there was one on global diaspora led by our Transational Committee. Typically, special sessions showcase topical issues and initiatives in our field and guarantee more time for discussion with the audience. The speakers included leading figures from the Decolonize collaborative that has inspired a slew of programs, panels, and publications that address and interrogate the colonial genealogies underlying pressing, though often marginalized, issues in Greek society and beyond: orientalism, Balkanism, xenophobia, homophobia, racism, and sexism:

Previously the general impetus for reading neo-Hellenism through the lens of postcolonial critique had emerged from work in the United States in the 1990s and later from the contributions of colleagues such as Herzfeld and Hamilakis. During the sovereign debt and migration crisis, talk of Greece as a ‘colony’ of one sort or another became commonplace; and the derogatory resonances of such talk, much of it emanating from Europe, called for a renewed reflection on western civilizational models. The collaborative emerged at around the time of celebrations marking the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution. And, in contrast to much scholarship from that time, the Decolonize Hellas group was inspired by the crisis within Europe, decolonial theory, studies of racial capitalism, and movements stirred by the Black Lives Matter protests in the States and other emancipatory, anti-colonial calls for social justice worldwide. 

How does the integration of different academic fields such as gender and media studies impact and redefine the scope of Modern Greek Studies? Could we say that interdisciplinary approaches are among the emerging trends for Modern Greek Studies in the North American academic landscape?

KL: The integration of different academic fields is something that is reflective of the general changes and progressiveness in university education. The traditional disciplines have made room for new academic centers and area studies. As gender studies and media studies take on greater prominence in university education, then it is only logical that Greece and the Greeks would be included in their topics of scholarship.   

Looking ahead, what do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for the field of Modern Greek Studies? With the challenges facing humanities how can Modern Greek Studies ensure its relevance and attract both academic and public interest?

KL: One of the more recent challenges that Modern Greek Studies faced was the association of our field as an outdated, narrow, or white hegemonic area of academia. It is unfortunate to see this perception – more correctly, misperception - especially in light of the various aspects that Greek studies can be analyzed and understood. Greek studies is unique as it combines both the ancient and the contemporary. An example of this can be seen in migration studies, environmental studies, gender studies, etc. Modern Greek Studies brings the past to the present and is far more dynamic and relevant than it typically understood. The MGSA’s advocacy of newer academic fields and areas of scholarly interest helps reinforce the timeliness and relevance of Greek studies.

*Interview to Ioulia Livaditi

The post Rethinking Greece |Katerina Lagos and Vangelis Calotychos of the Modern Greek Studies Association on cultural shifts and research trends in Modern Greek Studies appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

Κοstis Kornetis is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He has studied History and Political Science in Munich, London and Florence, taught history at Brown University, New York University and the University of Sheffield. His monograph "Children of the Dictatorship: Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the 'Long 1960s' in Greece" (2013) won the Edmund Keeley prize, while he has co-edited the volumes “Consumption and Gender in Southern Europe since the “Long 1960s” (2016), “Rethinking Democratisation in Spain, Greece and Portugal” (2019), and “The 1969 Greek Case at the Council of Europe. A Game Changer for Human Rights” (2024).

Kornetis’ research is focused on the history of dictatorships in southern Europe and the social movements of the twentieth century, especially around 1968 and the 'long 60s'. Likewise, he has published theoretical reflections on transnational history, oral history and the relationship between history and cinema. His most recent line of research focuses on the so-called history of the present and analyzes the history of democratic transitions in Spain, Portugal and Greece and the collective memory built around them.

On the occasion of the celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the restoration of Democracy in Greece as well as  the impending publishing of his new monograph “A Collective Biography of Southern European Democratization,” professor Kornetis spoke to Rethinking Greece* on how Greece, Spain and Portugal experienced and remember their respective democratic transitions, the imprint of the Metapolitefsi (post-dictatorship) period in Greek culture and of course, its political legacy.

Your latest book manuscript is titled “A Collective Biography of Southern European Democratization: The Age of Transitions.” Could you tell us a bit about this periodization of three generations and its significance?

The Age of Transitions is about how Greece, Spain and Portugal remember, represent, and commemorate their transitions today beyond similarities and differences: how moments of change, and the steady acceleration of events, are reflected in memory; how the transitions solidified into settled ‘autobiographies’ of individuals, of a generation, of each nation. I expound these transitions and their afterlives according to multiple political generations, identifying missing links between stories, storytellers, contexts, and respective political generations.

Hence the book shifts the attention of inquiry from institutional breakthroughs and setbacks to political generations. As transitions are inherently ‘multi-generational’ the book looks at three distinct generations. One that went through the events of the transitions as young adults and hence remembers them fully. One with people who were children during the transitions – not old enough to have participated in the events, but old enough to hold memories of them, however vague. And a third one, which was not born then, but contains ‘projective’ (post)memories of the events that go beyond family memories and recollections. The book is largely based on people who have become academics, artists and activists, at times with an overlap between these different functions, and hence combines their own lived experience with their capacity to reflect on the events using the tools of their disciplines or craft. Several of them have worked on the very issue of transitions, hence the book operates on multiple levels of analysis. 

In the book I sought to explore the intersection between personal recollections and collective remembrance, linking democratization studies to oral history and memory studies. I look at the memory battles, or conversely the synergies, between two sets of opposing poles: between individual memory and collective memory, and between private microhistories and dominant transition narratives. To do so, I bring into dialogue historical and biographical time. The similarities in memories across time, geography, and generations are surprising, outweighing their differences. 

Generational memory, I conclude, plays a crucial role in shaping the political, social and cultural developments of the entire post-authoritarian period, affecting people’s political conclusions. The diverse memories are, the book argues, concomitant with the myriad experiences of transition; and these unique experiences, and their memories subsequently structure present political space. They determine the meaning of democracy, as well as the identities of the political Left and Right.

What do you believe were some of the biggest challenges Greece faced in transitioning to a democratic system? How did the initial years of Metapolitefsi shape the political landscape of Greece?

Greece transitioned to a full-fledged democracy after many decades of political stalemate, extreme polarization, political exclusion and violence. Its post-1974 democratization did not signify the return to the status quo ante, meaning the pre-1967 state of affairs, but rather the end of the long post-civil war period. It was the final end of the “30-year war” according to novelist Alexandros Kotzias’s acute description, himself being an emblematic literary figure of the transitional years. So Greece had to move away from the anticommunist state of ethnikofrosyni and the ‘sickly democracy’ [καχεκτική δημοκρατία] per Ilias Nikolakopoulos, into a plural, parliamentary system, that included the banned Communists after decades of persecutions. In this respect, and despite inertias, it proved to be successful – with the last chapter of the revival of the repressed being written in 1981 with PASOK’s spectacular victory. The three additional challenges being the settlement of the nature of the country’s political system, the constitutional process, and the issue of transitional justice were all swiftly and efficiently dealt with: Greece abolished monarchy once and for all, voted a liberal Constitution, and put the culprits of the 1967 coup d’état on trial and in prison. Another great success was that for the first time in the 20th century the army stayed in the barracks where it belongs. Less successful was the issue of ‘dejuntification’, or cleansing, of the police and the judicial system from authoritarian residues.

How does Greece’s experience of transitioning to democracy compare with Portugal and Spain?

These are three societies that had to deal with a different set of problems and different chronologies as far as the onset of authoritarianism is concerned, with the Iberian dictatorship being residues from the interwar years. Nevertheless, they synchronized at the time of their transitions, being faced with similar challenges as far as democratic consolidation was concerned. Portugal faced the crucial issue of the loss of its empire, propelled by a revolutionary process, hence a full rupture with the authoritarian past. Spain, on the other hand, experienced a ‘pacted’ transition, based on an agreement between regime holders and recently legalized political parties aspiring to power. This transition from within had its own complexities but was hailed for a long time as a ‘model’ transition. The greatest challenge of the new democracy were the local nationalisms – Basque and Catalan, above all, a legacy that the transition bequeathed to the present day. Greece of course had its own major issue which was the ongoing conflict in Cyprus that followed the Turkish invasion. It did not deal with this issue head on as it was of existential proportions – a possible direct involvement in warfare might have had tremendous consequences for the country as a whole. Instead Karamanalis opted for the clever move of the removal from NATO’s military wing to let off steam. However, this lack of direct engagement of sorts fuelled resentment and a lingering trauma – especially in Cyprus proper, of course.

The Age of Transitions is actually grounded in the premise that each country’s transitional process led to distinct political histories and national trajectories. These distinctions, in turn, caused major variation in how each generation remembers the transitions. How people remember the transitions and both their achievements and their setbacks matters because these people became the very subjects of democratic rule.

All three Transitions (Portuguese, Spanish, Greek) are considered as “political masterpieces”. How has this perception changed over time? Do you believe the public memory of the Transitions still plays a role in contemporary politics?

This perception has changed a great deal, especially regarding the Spanish case, which spearheaded the idea of the “model transition” which inspired the entire field of ‘transitology’ back in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. It was supposed to be smooth and peaceful but nowadays we are much more aware of the bloody aspects of that transition, with extreme right-wing and left-wing political violence ruling the day, but also institutional one lurking from the Francoist era. More importantly, Spain’s transition was based on a so-called pact of silence regarding the past and the flagrant lack of transitional justice as far as Francoist crimes are concerned. This particular issue has come to be a matter of intense debate in the past years. Portugal on its own right was considered a rare case of a revolution that was both bloodless and without an authoritarian outcome. By contrast it led to a long and stable democracy ever since 1976 and the first free elections. However, some dark aspects concerning in particular the issue of war crimes, were never tackled head-on, as the militaries who made the revolution were themselves involved in that bloody conflict that lasted thirteen years. Connected to the above was the issue of half a million refugees from the ex-colonies, dubbed the ‘returnees’ who experienced great difficulties in becoming assimilated in Portuguese society. These are all issues which were slipped under the transitional carpet. For Greece dejuntification and Cyprus remained, as mentioned above, unresolved issues.

Such issues experienced a powerful comeback in the past years due especially to a new generation of thinkers, intellectuals, politicians, activists and artists wanting to promote uneasy memories. Definitely in terms of academia there is a much more analytical and critical approach to the transitions, backed up by more reflexive writings and artwork. In all three cases the public memory of transitions became weaponized during the years of the Great Recession (2009-2015). While the hegemonic discourse transitioned from celebratory to condemnatory, we might be reaching a point of more balanced approaches. After all, fifty years since the events are always a landmark point that triggers more reflection.

What was the imprint of the Metapolitefsi period in Greek culture and arts?

If we consider as Metapolitefsi the short period of 1974-75 or even 1974-81, its imprint was great, since this was a time of great effervescence. It is a time that is very much connected to the last years of the Colonels’ regime. In music, cinema, and the visual arts, we witness the dynamism and passion of the dictatorship years being channeled into creative expression. Contestatory action was fueling the arts and vice versa. So, we need to keep in mind the fact that, even though 1974 is a rupture and a turning point politically, much of what is happening in the arts has its origins, inspiration and raison d’etre in the previous era. Both New Greek Cinema and the dawn of the Greek political song date in the dictatorship years – and the same applies to the so-called Generation of the 70s in literature, or even the burgeoning counterculture and figures such as Leonidas Christakis, for instance. The current exhibition at the National Gallery of Greece on “Democracy” charts precisely this dynamism and the suffering of the Junta years being transformed into creativity in the mid-1970s onwards. As the exhibition shows, similar traits can be spotted in the Iberian Peninsula around the time of the fall of the dictatorships as well. 

What I find interesting in the book is the revival of certain political and aesthetic norms during the Great Recession (2009-2015) in Greece. The political or éngagé art had a comeback, or an afterlife – in a way several artists felt the need to go back to codes of a time of rupture and renewal to deal with a time of stagnation and crisis.

What do you think is the legacy of the transition in Greece?

The legacy of the transition is twofold. The present stable parliamentary system that managed to overcome grave crises has its roots in those very days, including the Constitution, which has remained basically unaltered. The ‘big bang’ of the Metapolitefsi, in historian Antonis Liakos’ fitting term, generated the socio-political plurality that characterized Greece in the following decades. I don’t share the negative appraisals of the Metapolitefsi which dominated the 2010s, identifying it with corruption, cronyism, clientelism and populism, to name but a few examples. Even though such traits existed and continue to exist, I doubt that they are the main characteristics of Greek democratic practice – to quote Robert M. Fishman's term– from 1974 to the present.

The second one has to do with the dual nature of the Greek transition: it bore from the very outset both the legacy of the Polytechnic uprising in November 1974, which discredited Papadopoulos’ ‘liberalization’ ‘from below’, and the actual collapse of Ioannidis’ junta on 23-24 July1974, that triggered regime change ‘from above’. The abundance of social movements during the first Metapolitefsi years and the continuous symbolic significance of the Polytechnic till the present-day attest to that dual significance. What is more, much of what happened in the first Metapolitefsi years and in a way shaped Greek democratic practice was moulded through these characteristics. In my book I quote legendary left-wing composer Mikis Theodorakis boasting in 1975 about Karamanlis’ above-mentioned withdrawal of the country from NATO’s armed wing, as being a left-wing demand all along. It is this dialogue between Left and Right, the government and the movements, unheard of until that moment, that can and should be catalogued alongside the Metapolitefsi characteristics – and why not, a legacy that should be rescued.

*Interview to: Ioulia Livaditi

Read also from Greek News Agenda:

• Rethinking Greece|Christina Koulouri on half a century of Greek democracy: “The greatest achievement of Greek democracy is its resilience”

The post Rethinking Greece | Kostis Kornetis on the Democratic Transitions of Greece, Spain, and Portugal: Memory and Legacy appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

Christina Koulouri is Rector of the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences and Professor of history, specialized in Greek, Balkan and European History of 19th-20th centuries. She has studied at the History and Archeology Department of the University of Athens, the Sorbonne University (Paris I) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

In 2010 she was a visiting researcher at the University of Sorbonne (Paris 1 –UMR IRICE), in 2017 Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton University and in June 2019 Visiting Fellow at the University of Regensburg (Germany). She has been awarded the Nikos Svoronos award "for outstanding achievement in the research of modern Greek historiography" (1994), the "Delphi" award of the International Olympic Academy (2012) and the Dimitrios Vikelas award of ISOH (International Society of Olympic Historians).

Professor Koulouri has published 8 books, 5 collective volumes and many articles in Greek, English and French, on issues such as history of nationalism, history of memory, history of sports and of the modern Olympic games, history of education and textbooks, reconciliation and peace education. Her latest book "Fustanellas and Togas. Historical Memory and National Identity in Greece, 1821-1930" (Φουστανέλες και χλαμύδες. Ιστορική μνήμη και εθνική ταυτότητα, 1821-1930, Athens, Alexandria, 2020) was awarded the Anagnostis Prize and the State Essay Prize.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Restoration of Democracy in Greece, Professor Koulouri spoke to Rethinking Greece* on the Metapolitefsi (the period of transition after the fall of the military junta in 1974) and its values; the social and cultural changes that occurred in Greece during that period; the importance of Greece's EU membership; the political and social impact of the 2008 crisis; the ever-changing but still vivid memory of the Metapolitefsi, and finally on the achievements of the past and the challenges of the present and future for Greek Democracy.

Discussions on the 50^th anniversary of the Restoration of Democracy in Greece cannot but examine the concept of the Metapolitefsi. How would you define Metapolitefsi, chronologically but also in terms of the values ​​it embodies?

Metapolitefsi literally means regime change and in this sense, it is identified with the period 1974-1975, from the fall of the colonels’ regime to the adoption of the Constitution and the Trials of the Junta. However, the term has come to denote a broader period whose beginning is known but whose end is disputed. In my opinion, the period ended with the 2008 financial crisis, when the political system was reshuffled, and the achievements of the previous historical period were questioned. At the same time, we can identify political cleavages within the Metapolitefsi period, which correspond to domestic and international events. In terms of values, the Metapolitefsi is identified with the democratization of Greek society at all levels and therefore refers to the values ​​associated with Democracy. Politically, this period is identified with PASOK, so it’s no coincidence that its ending also marked the political decline of PASOK, while the other major party, New Democracy, survived the political upheavals of the 2010s.

What were the most significant social and cultural changes in Greece during the Metapolitefsi period? How did Greek society evolve?

The euphoria following the collapse of the junta was reflected in every form of activity, characterized by what we could call a joy of life, especially during the optimistic 1980s. Democratization of family relations and education, changes in women's status, and sexual liberation marked profound social changes, bolstered by Greece's outward orientation, its entry into the EEC (later the EU), and rising living standards. In education, democratization meant changing the power relations governing the system and providing all young people with access to education, regardless of social or geographical background or gender. The publication of KLIK, the first lifestyle magazine in 1987, marked a shift towards conspicuous consumerism and a fantasy of social mobility. However, it wasn’t only social identities that were rearranged; since the 1990s Greek society enters a sort of identity crisis, which equally affected national identity, political identities as well as other collective identities. New collectives formed around cultural identities, such as those defined by traumatic memory (like the Pontians) or gender (like the LGBTQ+ communities), transcending the divide between "left" and "right," and intersecting with the political crisis post-2010.

How did international events and global geopolitical developments affect the course of the Metapolitefsi in Greece?

A small country in Southeast Europe like Greece is inevitably influenced by international developments at all levels and is less resilient to global shocks. The end of the Cold War found Greece in the Western bloc, avoiding thus the dramatic transformations of Eastern bloc countries, but still affected the country in two ways: firstly, by neighboring Balkan countries' aspirations to join organizations like NATO and the EU, and secondly, by a massive wave of economic migration to Greece. In the first case, issues like the new Macedonian question over the name of (now) North Macedonia, Kosovo's independence, and relations with Albania posed many challenges. The so called name issue, in particular, plagued Greek foreign policy for decades and wasted precious resources, while domestically it fueled conservative reactions, exacerbated by the immigration wave. Racist rhetoric and xenophobic violence strengthened the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, and although its parliamentary representation was curtailed following its trial, far-right and fascist ideologies survive, subtly infiltrating other areas. As long as wars rage nearby, peace remains precarious both externally and internally.

What was the impact of Greece's EU membership on the country's course? How has the Europe-Greece relationship transformed over these decades?

Greece's EU membership has been pivotal in many respects. Joining the EEC in 1980, soon after the transition to democracy and following Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, was seen as a guarantee of political stability. The EU set specific requirements and conditions for Greece's membership, leading to many institutional adjustments; it also offered economic support for development projects (the "Delors packages", the Community Support Frameworks etc). Moreover, European integration offered Greece significant advantages, ranging from the right of free movement in other EU countries without many formalities and foreign currency exchange, to the country’s participation in shaping supranational European policies. However, these benefits were questioned when the financial crisis struck in 2008 and during the bleak 2010s. Greece's relationship with Europe was tested by austerity policies and memoranda, increasing Euroscepticism. The 2015 referendum saw 38.69% in favour of the “we are staying in Europe” supporters, as opposed to 61.31% against. This result, however, should not be seen as an expression of a genuine desire to sever ties with Europe but as a protest vote against the severe austerity measures imposed and the dramatic increase in poverty.

How did the 2008 economic crisis affect Greek democracy and political stability? Do you believe the political fallout from this period has been addressed?

The economic crisis facilitated the rise of the so-called "anti-systemic" votes at the expense of the two parties that governed during the Metapolitefsi, i.e., New Democracy, and PASOK. The June 2012 general elections marked the shakeup of the political system, with New Democracy getting 18.85% (down from 33.5%) and PASOK just 13.18% (down from 43.9% in 2009), while the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn entered parliament for the first time with 6.97% and 21 seats. Turmoil continued with the collapse of SYRIZA in the May 2023 elections, a party that absorbed the social protests of the crisis era but was "punished" for failing voters' initial expectations. The real casualty of the crisis seems to be the two-party system that characterized the era of the Metapolitefsi. This can be evidenced by the current political scene where we have a strong leading party and a fragmented opposition; however, the political tradition of two opposing “camps” has not disappeared. It remains to be seen if the center-left will regroup or if the parties to the right of New Democracy will be further strengthened.

How has the memory and significance of the Metapolitefsi changed over time and across generations? Do you believe the historical memory of this period still plays a role in contemporary Greek politics?

As long as we believe that the era of the Metapolitefsi has not yet ended and for lack of a new term for the period that has succeeded it (in the event that we believe that the Metapolitefsi is ineed over), talking about collective memory is challenging. It's about the memory of specific events (e.g., the Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, PASOK's victory in 1981, joining the euro in 2001, the 2015 referendum etc) recalled by those who experienced them because they define their identity. And since we are talking about different generations with vastly different historical experiences, memories differ, and construct different identities. Given that the "Polytechnic generation" that ruled the country during the Metapolitefsi, is considered responsible for the financial crisis, younger generations who found themselves in the midst of the crisis hold a rather negative historical memory of the period. However, the negative assessment of the era is not only a generational issue, but also a matter of political identity. Criticism of the era’s policies mainly stems from right-wing positions, as a reaction against what was considered the ideological dominance of the Left. Indeed, the Metapolitefsi as a historical period has been invested with specific meanings and refers to particular values ​​associated with the Left. Hence, the memory of the Metapolitefsi lives on, through political ideologies and prominent figures in politics and culture.

Looking back, what do you consider the greatest achievements and weaknesses of Greek democracy over the last 50 years? What challenges do you think it will face in the future?

The greatest achievement of Greek democracy is that is has endured. This is no small feat for a country with a history of military interventions in politics, authoritarian deviations, dictatorships, civil wars, and regime changes. It's also notable that democracy withstood the shocks of the economic and political crisis and the threat of far-right extremism. However, issues of transparency, accountability, corruption, and clientelism persist. Recent tragic events highlighted the state's operational gaps. Democracy faces numerous challenges, present and future. Democracy is not a given; it is vulnerable to unforeseen threats—both domestic and international—making protective mechanisms and a cultivated democratic consciousness among citizens crucial.

*Interview to: Ioulia Livaditi, Translation: Magda Hatzopoulou

The post Rethinking Greece|Christina Koulouri on half a century of Greek democracy: “The greatest achievement of Greek democracy is its resilience” appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

Marinos Sariyannis has been working as a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean Studies/FORTH since 2007, specializing in Ottoman social, cultural and intellectual history. He is deputy director of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH and member of the Editorial Board of Archivum Ottomanicum (Wiesbaden) and of Bulletin de Correspondance hellénique moderne et contemporain (Athens – Paris). He has published more than fifty articles and chapters in journals such as Turcica, Archivum Ottomanicum, International Journal of Turkish Studies, Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, Turkish Historical Review, and others. His monograph entitled “A History of Ottoman Political Thought up to the Early Nineteenth Century” was published in 2019.

Sariyannis spoke to Rethinking Greece* about the shift in the perception and study of the Ottoman past in Greek historiography and the emergence of a new generation of Greek Ottomanist scholars, whose ease with both Greek and Ottoman sources allows them to examine Ottoman realities in the Greek lands in a multifaceted way; on the main fields of Ottoman Studies research in Greece (urban history, agricultural realities, the peculiarities of islands, the commercial and maritime activity, monasteries); on the project GHOST, an effort to explore the meaning and content of what the Ottomans meant by “marvelous”, “strange” or “extraordinary”, and whether the Weberian notion of “disenchantment” can be applied in an Ottoman context; and finally, on his monograph "A History of Ottoman Political Thought up to the Early Nineteenth Century,” claiming that "the Ottomans had their own share in the 'Age of Revolutions,' although a very sui generis one."

Up until the 1980s-1990s, the Ottoman period (termed Tourkokratia or ‘Turkish rule’) was seen generally by Greek scholars as a period not worth studying. Why do you think this perception had remained prevalent for so long in Greek historiography? What was the shift that caused this perception to change?

Undoubtedly, this perception was primarily a result of the prevalent nationalist foundations of Greek historiography. Greek historians felt their duty was to study the development of the ‘Greek nation’ throughout the centuries; the Ottoman period was considered a lacuna of sorts, a dark space of yoke and repression between two brilliant periods of independent glory (the Byzantine Empire considered a predominantly Greek formation). Being a pillar of the ideological foundations of the Greek state, this concept remained prevalent for more than one hundred and fifty years. The Ottoman period was seen as a foreign rule, an occupation that lasted centuries and prevented any kind of intellectual and social development, during which nothing mattered but the efforts of the Greeks to revolt.

By the end of the 1970s, however, after the fall of the nationalist military junta, a new generation of historians had begun studying this period in its own right, focusing in its economic and social realities and trying to take into account the few translated Ottoman sources. It was in this context that the first generations of Ottomanist scholars, trained in the UK, the USA, Austria or France, begun exploring and publishing Ottoman archives on the history of the Greek lands. Some of them inspired young students to pursue Ottoman studies, and with the help of some financially happy years that allowed several posts of Ottoman history to be created in universities and research centers all along Greece in the 2000s the field is now thriving.

What did the Greek perspective bring to the field of Ottoman studies? And on the other hand, how has the inclusion of Ottoman studies influenced our understanding of modern Greek history?

The main advantage of Greek Ottomanists over their peers is exactly their ease with both Greek and Ottoman sources, which allows them to examine Ottoman realities in the Greek lands in a multifaceted way. Their emphasis on the hard data is dictated both by their training in the intellectual climate of modern Greek historiography and by the nature of the Ottoman sources, i.e. mainly tax registers or judicial proceedings. The combination of Ottoman administrative sources and Greek communal narratives and archives leads to an emphasis in “history from below” and has perhaps contributed to a more nuanced understanding of the coexistence of religious groups under Ottoman rule. On the other hand, the work of Greek Ottomanists showed that no history of the Greek lands can be written without studying Ottoman sources and without taking into account not only the Ottoman institutions, but also non-Greek populations. What is more, the Ottoman period is not any more seen as a static context of a dynamic Greek nation; we now understand that the institutional and social realities of the Ottoman Empire developed considerably from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries.

What can you tell us about Ottoman Studies in Greece now? What are the principal fields of studies?

Ottoman studies are blooming in Greece: there are professors and researchers of Ottoman history in almost every university and research center, and postgraduate students often choose an Ottomanist direction. Greek Ottoman scholarship has been predominantly occupied with economic, demographic and social history: this is only too natural, given the multitude of such sources preserved in Greek archives. Urban history, agricultural realities, the peculiarities of islands, the commercial and maritime activity, monasteries – these have been the main topics that occupy Greek Ottomanists. Furthermore, some scholars have addressed wider topics that apply to the Ottoman Empire as a whole, such as revolts, centre-periphery relations or issues of cultural and intellectual history.

You teach at the Department of Ottoman History at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH in Rethymnon. How has the history of Crete during influenced research in the Department? What are the particular sources that a specialist in Ottoman history can study οn the field?

To be more precise, I only teach in the postgraduate program which is run jointly by the Institute and the University of Crete; the Department at the Institute mainly deals with research, rather than teaching. That said, ever since its creation in the mid-1980s the Department has been focusing in Cretan history, engaging in a long-time project that aims to publish the huge Ottoman judicial archive of Iraklio/Kandiye (Candia) since 2000. All of the members have also dealt with various aspects of the history of Ottoman Crete. However, in the last ten years our research directions have moved toward other sources and topics as well, ranging from the study of other places in Ottoman Greece to the janissary networks in the Eastern Mediterranean, not to mention my own musings in cultural and intellectual history. At any rate, Crete remains a favorite object of our research, not least because of the wealth of archival sources available. These include the voluminous judicial registers, but also tax registers and other documents preserved in Istanbul.

Since 2018 you direct the project "GHOST - Geographies and Histories of the Ottoman Supernatural Tradition: Exploring Magic, the Marvelous, and the Strange in Ottoman Mentalities”. Can you tell us more about this fascinating premise and the insight it brings to Ottoman studies?

The GHOST project, which now comes toward its end, is an effort to explore the meaning and content of what the Ottomans meant by “marvelous”, “strange” or “extraordinary”, and, vice versa, the correspondent notions that covered what we now describe as “supernatural/preternatural” and “irrational”. We seek to specify the Ottoman attitudes against beliefs in such phenomena or practice of such methods, both holy (e.g. miracles of dervishes) and suspect (magic, witchcraft). Various authors might attribute such phenomena to actions by the jinn or, alternatively, to a secret interaction of the cosmic elements. A major aim of the project is to analyze the various ways changes took place from the mid-seventeenth century onwards: for instance, we tried to study whether certain phenomena were pushed from the field of “inexplicable” to the field of “marvelous”, whether we can speak of any trend to “rationalize” the image of the world, or, in other terms, whether the Weberian notion of “disenchantment” can be applied in an Ottoman context.

To this aim, we sought to trace the semantic shifts in terms denoting nature, miracles, magic and so forth, examining miracles, dreams and the various beliefs concerning the role of stars and the homologies and hierarchies of the microcosm and the macrocosm. There is also the “preternatural”, i.e. what is deemed natural (not miraculous) but inexplicable (the “paranormal” in modern terms): wonders of the world, hermetic knowledge, the jinn, and of course the shifting ways to interpret natural phenomena. Furthermore, we analyzed efforts and techniques designed in order to establish human control over such phenomena: in other words, Ottoman occult sciences, such as divination, magic, astrology, alchemy and so forth.

The results of the project can be seen in more detail in our publications: mainly, the papers published in our online, open access journal called “Aca’ib: Occasional papers on the Ottoman perceptions of the supernatural” and in a monograph I wrote,  Ottomans and the Supernatural: Nature, the Hereafter, and the Limits of Knowledge in the Ottoman Empire, which is hopefully to be published soon.

Υou are the author of the book “A History of Ottoman Political Thought up to the Early Nineteenth Century.” What are your thoughts on the existence of “Ottoman Enlightenment?” Can you identify any enduring legacies of Ottoman political thought in modern political theory or practice?

This book was the result of another research project, back in 2014-2015, which sought to trace the history of Ottoman political ideas and their relationship to social and political developments. Now, this project had no aspirations of making any connections with the present; it aimed in mapping the intellectual trends from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, seeing them in the background of previous Islamic thought, rather than modern ideas. There has been a lively discussion about “Ottoman Enlightenment”, indeed, or if you prefer an “Islamic Enlightenment” of the eighteenth century. This has less to do with political ideas than with a democratization of knowledge and a legitimization of individual thought, which in my view was linked somehow paradoxically with the influential fundamentalist movement of the seventeenth century, the Kadızadelis. Indeed, if Islamic fundamentalism is a recurrent idea in modern political realities it has its origins in the Ottoman era. But in my view it is more interesting to examine certain political developments of the eighteenth century, namely the self-legitimization of the janissary networks seeing themselves as representatives of all Muslims and thus legitimate members of the political nation (the community which could claim a share in political deliberation). It can be said that the Ottomans had their own share in the “Age of Revolutions”, although a very sui generis one, and that the internal dynamics of Ottoman society were less “despotic” than we usually tend to think.

*Interview to: Ioulia Livaditi

Read also from Greek News Agenda:

• Restoration of Ottoman monuments in Greece
• Remembering the Ottoman Past
• Antonis Hadjikyriacou on the Ottoman period, the Greek Revolution of 1821, and new paths in Greek historiography

The post Rethinking Greece | Marinos Sariyannis on the thriving field of Ottoman Studies in Greece appeared first on Greek News Agenda.