Bibliography on Greek America (2021)

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Academic Publications, in English
(Books)

League, Panayotis. 2021. Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-Sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora. University of Michigan Press.

Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora explores the legacy of the Great Catastrophe—the death and expulsion from Turkey of 1.5 million Greek Christians following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922—through the music and dance practices of Greek refugees and their descendants over the last one hundred years. The book draws extensively on original ethnographic research conducted in Greece (on the island of Lesvos in particular) and in the Greater Boston area, as well as on the author’s lifetime immersion in the North American Greek diaspora. Through analysis of handwritten music manuscripts, homemade audio recordings, and contemporary live performances, the book traces the routes of repertoire and style over generations and back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, investigating the ways that the particular musical traditions of the Anatolian Greek community have contributed to their understanding of their place in the global Greek diaspora and the wider post-Ottoman world. Alternating between fine-grained musicological analysis and engaging narrative prose, it fills a lacuna in scholarship on the transnational Greek experience.

Academic Publications, in English
(Articles, Book Chapters)

Anagnostou, Yiorgos. 2021. “Migrant Life Stories: Little and Grand Narratives.” A Journal for Greek Letters, 20 (December): 16–42.

– – – – – . 2021. “Voice and Voicing in Blessings and Vows: ‘Finding’ and Funding Heritage in the Greek Transnational Village.” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 31 December. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/essays/finding-and-funding-heritage

– – – – – . 2021. “Immigraντ Poetics: Play as Performativity of the Liminal Self.” In Ludics: Play as Humanistic Inquiry, Vassiliki Rapti and Eric Gordon, Eric, eds., pp. 339–58. Palgrave Macmillan.

– – – – – . 2021. “Private and Public Partnerships: The Greek Diaspora’s Branding of Philotimo as Identity,” Journal of Greek Media & Culture, 7: (1): 3–25.

Dounia, Margarita. 2021. “‘When I Came to Canada, all I did was Cry’: Emotions and Migration of Greek Women in Postwar Montreal.” In Emotional Landscapes: Love, Gender, and Migration, Marcelo J. Borges, Sonia Cancian, and Linda Reeder eds., pp. 201-219. University of Illinois Press.

Hart, Laurie Kain. 2021. “The Uses of Abandonment: Reflections on the FilmBlessings and Vows.” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 31 December. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/essays/the-uses-of-abandonment

Kitroeff, Alexander. 2021. “The State and the Nation: Greece and its Diaspora (1821-2021).” In He Hepanastase tou 1821 kae he Sygchrone Hellada - Dialogos gia ten exelixe ton fileleftheron ideon ke tautotiton (Η Επανάσταση του 1821 και η Σύγχρονη Ελλάδα - Διάλογος για την Εξέλιξη των Φιλελεύθερων Ιδεών και Ταυτοτήτων), Athanasios Grammenos ed., pp. 190–208. Athens: Kambili.

Kitroeff, Alexander. 2021. “Uneasy Alliances: Archbishop Iakovos and the Greek Colonels’ Dictatorship.” In The Greek Military Dictatorship: Revisiting a Troubled Past, Othon Anastasakis and Katerina Lagos, eds., pp. 215–39. New York: Berghahn.

Keywords: Greek American transnational politics; Greek Colonels’ dictatorship; Archbishop Iakovos.

League, Panayotis and Kay Kaufman Shelemay. 2021. “Listening to and Learning from Music of the Global United States.” InSounding Together: Collaborative Perspectives on U.S. Music in the 21st Century, Charles Hiroshi Garrett and Carol J. Oja, eds., pp. 82–109. University of Michigan Press. [https://www.press.umich.edu/11374592/sounding_together, open access]

For our case studies, we profile musicians from the Greek American and Ethiopian American diasporas who are deeply involved in global jazz, among other hybrid styles, and provide an opportunity to contrast the experiences of individuals from two lively immigrant populations with different political histories, racial identities, and musical traditions. They have in common a number of important sociopolitical and artistic features that, we argue, move them into productive dialogue despite their superficial differences. These features include departure from their respective homelands in the wake of armed conflict and sudden political changes; sustained engagement with musical and cultural formations that developed in their new home in the United States; and the development of novel strategies to meld the modal, rhythmic, and poetic character of their respective homelands’ traditions with various aspects of global popular music.

Manis, Andrew M. 2021. “Religion, Belonging, and Social Mobility in Civil Rights Era Birmingham, Alabama.” Ex-centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media 5. [open access at https://ejournals.lib.auth.gr/ExCentric/article/view/8493]

This project narrates the story of Greek-Americans' reactions to the historic civil rights movement in perhaps its most important nerve centers, Birmingham, Alabama. In 1960 Archbishop Iakovos placed in that racial hotbed a young priest named Father Soterios “Sam” Gouvellis, who served the Holy Trinity-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church during the most volatile years of the black freedom struggle. Father Sam joined the ad hoc ministerial group whose letter to Martin Luther King Jr. spawned the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. Gouvellis became involved with the black freedom struggle in Birmingham and eventually marched with King and Archbishop Iakovos in Selma. This project will tell the story of how Gouvellis and his congregation negotiated the mysteries of evangelical religion in the Bible Belt and the enigmas of race in the Jim Crow South. This article distills the argument of what will be the only biography of Gouvellis and one of a very few studies of religion, race, and Greek ethnicity in the American South.

Papadopoulos, Yannis G.S. 2021. “Ottoman, Anatolian, Greek, yet above All American: Evolving Identifications and Cultural Appropriations.” Immigrants & Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora, 28 December, published online, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02619288.2021.2014326?journalCode=fimm20

The article focuses on the importance of the migration experience in transforming the ‘identifications’ of Greek-Orthodox Ottoman subjects in relation to the historical reality of their country of origin and their host country, the United States, as well as the country that from the beginning claimed their loyalty as a national centre, Greece. Subsequently, it examines the terms that defined the construction of religious, social and political diaspora groupings and the attitudes that conditioned their participation in the Greek nationalist project.

Although “rival” ethnic groups in the United States came to blows during periods of violence in the Ottoman Empire, it appears that they also reconstructed in their daily life a “deterritorialized Ottoman space” based on their origin in a common city or region or common cultural characteristics. There are hints that immigrants’ common references or memories led to the construction of a “nostalgic Ottomanism” when the Empire dissolved, contributing to the survival of cultural elements and the continuation of social and labour relations with persons from rival ethnic groups.

Zafiris, Nikitas. 2021. “Karolos Koun and American Drama (1946-1965): An Overview.” Ex-centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media 5. [open access at https://ejournals.lib.auth.gr/ExCentric/article/view/8500]

Τhe present article examines the connection between the Greek stage director Karolos Koun and his staging of modern American drama. Specifically, it investigates the systematic incorporation of plays by writers such as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller into the repertoire of Koun’s Art Theater from the Greek Civil War Era to the Cold War period. The aesthetic and ideological choices of the director are placed within the historical and sociopolitical context of Greece, while the connotations of American cultural politics are also taken into consideration. As the article illustrates, Koun used American Realism in order to stage a reflection of global modernity in his locality during the tumultuous years of post-war Greece.

Panagakos, Anastasia. 2021. “Community in Performance: Greek Folk Dancing and Cultural Production among Gen Z in California.” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 3 March. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/articles/community-in-performance

Pavlik, Alexander. 2021. “What Has Athens to do with New York? Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Meletios Metaxakis and the 1918 Conference on Unity with the American Episcopal Church.” Anglican and Episcopal History (September): 223–50.

Sclafani, Jennifer and Alexander Nikolaou. 2021. “Metalinguistic Discourse and “Grenglish” in Narratives of Return Migration.” Metalinguistic Communities, 95–116.

This study examines the nexus of language use, ideologies, and ethnolinguistic identities of diasporic Greek return migrants. Based on interviews with second-generation Greeks who have relocated to Athens, we analyze narratives of return to the ancestral homeland. We focus on returnees’ discovery of their native variety—“Grenglish”—as distinctive from the Greek of contemporary Athens. Some frame linguistic differences in terms of dialect or register, while others invoke standard language ideologies, evaluating varieties in terms of purity and tradition/modernization. Returnees also mobilize these varieties to explain cultural conflicts, position identities, and authenticate their knowledge of homeland and diasporic cultures. This study highlights the complex relationship between linguistic hybridity and ethnic identity by exploring the indexical meanings of a heritage language in a superdiverse society.

Stroebel, William. 2021. “Longhand Lines of Flight: Cataloging Displacement in a Karamanli Refugee's Commonplace Book.” PMLA, 136 (2): 190–212.

This essay examines a handwritten refugee ballad in a handmade codex, using both to illuminate some of the lingering blind spots in national philology and world literature. The ballad, printed in full after the essay, belongs to the Karamanli Christians of Anatolia, who spoke Turkish but wrote it in the Greek alphabet. Uprooted from Turkey by the Greco-Turkish Population Exchange of 1923, Karamanli refugees were scattered across Greece and North America, where they were often excluded from publishing. Poets like the author of the present ballad, Agathangelos, turned instead to more accessible manuscript formats. I interpret Agathangelos’s ballad and codex as a catalog, documenting and preserving his lost homeland, where multiple scriptworlds, languages, and confessions coexisted. I conclude by calling for a people’s history of the book to decentralize and democratize world literature’s political economy (tacitly accepted as print capitalism), foregrounding textual networks that have remained illegible to our discipline.

Thomopoulos, Elaine and John Psiharis. 2021. “‘Working to Preserve Our Heritage’: A Historical Review of Greek-American Community Services (1983-2002, Chicago, Illinois).” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 25 April. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/blog/working-to-preserve-our-heritage

Vaggalis, Kathryn. 2021. “Off-White Romantics: Cross-cultural Histories of Immigrant Picture Brides and the Process of US Race Making.” Journal of American Ethnic History, 40 (3): 43–69.

The stories of early twentieth-century Japanese picture brides—women in arranged marriages coming to the United States to meet the immigrant men to whom they were married by “proxy” according to the popular press—are widely known in memory, scholarship, and popular culture. Less is known about their Southern European counterparts—primarily women from Greece, but also Italy and Armenia—coming to the country at the same time, and to much less public outcry and legislative restrictions. Yet as this article demonstrates, the title of “picture bride” was prominently and popularly applied to Southern European and Japanese women alike as a politically charged racial signifier that provides nuance to the complex yet fluid racial hierarchies of the early twentieth century. This article closely examines popular media depictions of “off-white” picture brides using Greek immigrants as a case study—the predominant European group practicing picture marriage from 1907 to 1924—to demonstrate the quotidian ways that audiences learned the politics of race and immigration through seemingly apolitical messages about family, marriage, and romantic love. This work argues that far from being a mere footnote in Greek American history, picture brides and their popular depictions in national newspapers were critical symbols of Greeks' transition from “in-between” white others to ethnic white Americans. By contextualizing picture marriage as occurring across a diverse racial hierarchy, this work illumines the ways that white supremacy acts in contradictory, often hypocritical ways, excluding some groups while excusing and including others.

Dissertations

Adams, Anne Marie. 2021. Naming and Re(claiming) Feminism in Orthodoxy: Voicing the Gender and Religious Identities of Greek Orthodox Women. DePaul University.

This dissertation is a qualitative study of the effects of Greek Orthodoxy on the gender and religious identity meaning-making of five Greek-American women. The emergent themes from this study indicate that participants’ gender and religious identities were heavily influenced by the dueling tensions and contradictions between patriarchy and feminism, conservative traditionalism and modernity, and secular life and the religious community (i.e., family and church). Underpinning this study are Narrative Identity Theory and Feminist Standpoint Theory. Portraiture methodology was employed across three semi-structured interviews, as well as three written/video reflection journals to reveal how women, as articulated through their own perspectives, made meaning of their lived experiences at the intersection of their gendered and religious identity constructions. The results of this study suggest that these participants (un)consciously navigate the impact of patriarchal ideology, power, privilege, and oppression by finding goodness in small acts and feelings of connectedness as a basis for the development of their personal agency, voice, and womanhood. Implications for research, Orthodoxy, and practice are discussed.

Publications, in Greek (Books)

Αναγνώστου, Γιώργος. 2021. «Χαρτογραφήσεις της Λευκής Εθνοτικότητας: Λαϊκή Εθνογραφία και Δημιουργία Χρηστικών Παρελθόντων στον Ελληνοαμερικανικό Κόσμο». Μετάφραση Πελαγία Μαρκέτου, Νήσος (Translation of Contours of White Ethnicity: Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America [Ohio University Press, 2009]).

Van Steen, Gonda. 2021. «Ζητούνται Παιδιά από την Ελλάδα: Υιοθεσίες στην Αμερική του Ψυχρού Πολέμου». Μετάφραση Αριάδνη Λουκάκου, Ποταμός (Translation of Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece. Kid pro quo? [University of Michigan Press, 2019]).

Publications, in Greek
(Articles, Book Chapters, Book Reviews in Academic Journals, Essays, Journal Special Issues)

Αναγνώστου, Γιώργος. 2021. «Οι Σπουδές Διασποράς Μάς Καλούν». Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 9 May. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/editorials/diaspora-studies-calling-gr

– – – – – . 2021. «Ρήξεις σε Κανονιστικά Αφηγήματα», στο Εξέγερση: Η ρήξη με την παράδοση και η σύγκρουση με την εξουσία, Έδρα Κ. Π. Καβάφη του Πανεπιστημίου του Μίσιγκαν, Επιμέλεια Βασίλης Λαμπρόπουλος.

Παπαδόπουλος, Γιάννης. 2021. «Το καθεστώς των συνταγματαρχών και οι ελληνοαμερικανικές ηγετικές ομάδες». Τα Ιστορικά: Περιοδική Έκθεση Ιστορίας, Έτος τριακοστό όγδοο (Απρίλιος): 205–20.

Χουλιάρας, Γιώργος. 2021. «Λάντλοου». Χάρτης, 21 Απριλίου. https://www.hartismag.gr/hartis-28/stigmata/lantlooy

Academic Reviews and Review Essays
(Books, Documentaries, Films)

Anagnostou, Yiorgos. 2021. Review of Alice Scourby, The Vanishing Greek Americans: A Crisis of Identity. River Vale, NJ: Cosmos Publishing. 2020. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 39 (1): 215–19.

Avdela. Efi. 2021. Review Gonda Van Steen, Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece. Kid pro quo? Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2019. Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. September 18. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/adoption-memory-and-cold-war-greece

Ben-Zvi, Linda. 2021. Review of Artemis Leontis, Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A Life in Ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. May 16. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/a-life-in-ruins

Bucuvalas, Tina. 2021. Review of Ann Flesor Beck, Sweet Greeks: First-Generation Immigrant Confectioners in the Heartland. Heartland Foodways Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020. Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. July 3. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/sweet-greeks

Coufoudakis, Can. 2021. Review of Gonda Van Steen, Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid Pro Quo? Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. American Journal of Contemporary Hellenic Issues, 12 (Spring).

Dounia, Margarita. 2021. Review of Giota Tourgeli (Γιώτα Τουργέλη),Οι Μπρούκληδες: Έλληνες Μετανάστες στην Αμερική και Μετασχηματισμοί στις Κοινότητες Καταγωγής 1890-1940 (Brouklides: Greek Migrants in the United States and Transformations in the Communities of Origin 1890-1940), Athens: EKKE e-books, available online: https://ebooks.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/ekke. Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. September 11. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/brouklides.

Konstantellou, Eva. 2021. “The Teaching and Learning of Greek Americans: A Review Essay.” Review of Fevronia K. Soumakis and Theodore G. Zervas, editors, Educating Greek Americans: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Pathways. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. 2020. Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. November 26. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/teaching-and-learning-of-greek-americans

Lazaridis, Henriette. 2021. Review of Georgia Kolias,The Feasting Virgin. Ann Arbor, MI: Bywater Books, 2020. Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. April 18. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/the-feasting-virgin

O’Connor, Hiatt C. 2021. “A Word Slips Like a Drowning Hand: On the Poetry of N.C. Germanacos.” Review of N.C. Germanacos, Ora et Labora. The Paideia Institute: New York, 2019. Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. January 2. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/poetry/a-word-slips-like-a-drowning-hand

Olmsted, Kathryn. 2021. Review of James H. Barron, The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate. Brooklyn: Melville House. 2020. Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. July 17. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/the-greek-connection

Papadaki, Eirini. 2021. Gonda Van Steen, Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid Pro Quo? Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 39 (1): 253–56.

Riccardi-Swartz, Sarah. 2021. Review of (a) D. Oliver Herbel, Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2013; (b) Alexander Kitroeff, The Greek Orthodox Church in America: A Modern History. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2020; (c) Amy Slagle, The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace: American Conversions to Orthodox Christianity. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2011. Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. April 11. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/three-books-about-greek-orthodoxy

Soumakis, Fevronia. 2021. Review of Alexander Kitroeff, The Greek Orthodox Church in America: A Modern History. Ithaca, NY: Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press. 2020. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 39 (1): 259–63.

Essays

Anagnostou, Yiorgos. 2021. “A Paradigm Award, A Paradigm for Greek/American Cultural Policy.” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 3 August. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/essays/greek-american-cultural-policy

– – – – – . 2021. “‘It is Chic to be Greek’ in the Greek/American Classroom: Ethnic Revival, Representation, Gender.” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 31 May. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/essays/it-is-chic-to-be-greek

Karambelas, Nicholas G. 2021. “The American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Greek Proclamation of the Messenian Senate (1821).” American Journal of Contemporary Hellenic Issues, 12 (Spring).

Kyriakides, Klearchos A. 2021. “Eugene T. Rossides (1927-2020): His Place in History.” American Journal of Contemporary Hellenic Issues, 12 (Spring).

Leontis, Artemis. 2021. “Writing Greek America: Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality.” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 22 September. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/ergastirio/perspectives-on-gender-and-sexuality

Essays, Poetic

Stecopoulos, Eleni. 2021. “Diaspora Diabola.” Pamenar Press, 7 April. https://www.pamenarpress.com/post/eleni-stecopoulos?fbclid=IwAR2bsXrRZMDIfz0d5aEFmILQaSKi2VgZrSwR0UlYeyIjfX1OiyMUTiLi_KE

Tributes

A Tribute to Harry Mark Petrakis (Gerasimus Katsan, guest editor). Contributors: Yiorgos Anagnostou, Dan Georgakas, Gerasimus Katsan, Eirini Kotsovili, Nick Mamatas, Elaine Thomopoulos. Ergon: Greek American Arts and Letters, 28 June 2021. https://ergon.scienzine.com/page/harry-mark-petrakis-tribute

A Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. Contributors: Joanna Eleftheriou, Dan Georgakas, Gregory Jusdanis, Maria Kaliambou, Alexandra Kostoulas, Despina Lalaki, Panayotis League, Artemis Leontis, Eric Poulos, Fevronia Soumakis, George Syrimis, Elaine Thomopoulos. Ergon: Greek American Arts and Letters, 18 January 2021. https://ergon.scienzine.com/page/martin-luther-king-jr-day

Bibliographies

Anagnostou, Yiorgos. 2021. “Bibliography on Greek America (2020).” Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. 28 January. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/bibliographies/bibliography-on-greek-america-2020

Academic Editorials, Position Papers, Viewpoints

Ravazoula, Maria. 2021. “My Big Fat Greek Diaspora: Greek-American Diaspora Diplomacy,” 5 September. https://www.e-ir.info/2021/09/05/my-big-fat-greek-diaspora-greek-american-diaspora-diplomacy/

Podcasts

League, Panayiotis. 2021. “Meet us on the Dance Floor.” https://getpodcast.com/podcast/syrtos/meet-us-on-the-dance-floor-getting-to-know-dimitrios-dallas_e950005b37

Editor’s Note: If your published work falls under any of the above categories, and you do not see it in this bibliography send complete bibliographic information to anagnostou.1@osu.edu