All Ages | The MacMillan Center Hellenic Studies Program

Documentary Screening: With Olive Groves in the Aegean: Greeks & Turks

In 1923 when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk rebuilt modern Turkey on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, the Treaty of Lausanne ordered that all Muslims of Turkish decent who were living in Greece be exchanged with any Greek Christians living in Asia Minor. This population exchange of nearly two million people has left deep traces, many of which are still perceptible today. Fortunately one thing soothed the resulting pain and resentment: both Greeks and Turks had been growing olive trees since the olden days, providing a main source of survival and wealth.

Borders, Migration, and Ethnicity in Historical Perspective: Greek Americans and Italian Americans in Context

Theodora Patrona teaches literary courses at the School of English of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki as special teaching fellow. She has published extensively on Greek American and Italian American literature and film, and regularly reviews for journals and sites abroad. Dr Patrona is the author of Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late Twentieth Century Greek American and Italian American Literature(Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017), and coeditor of Redirecting Ethnic Singularity: Italian Americans and Greek Americans in Conversation (Fordham University Press, 2022).

Modern Greek Language Table

Come practice and hear Modern Standard Greek with Maria Kaliambou, Senior Lector at the Hellenic Studies Program where she teaches folklore and Modern Greek language.

Extreme Rituals as Social Technologies

Dimitris Xygalatas
Department of Anthropology and Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut

The Far Right in Greece and the Law

Natalie Alkiviadou is Senior Research Fellow at Danish think-tank Justitia. Her research focuses on free speech, ‘hate speech’ and the far-right with 2 Routledge monographs and a range of peer-reviewed articles on the themes.
This book critically evaluates the rise of the far-right in Greece, detailing the legal context in which to understand both the emergence of Golden Dawn, the far-right’s largest grouping, and the 2020 court decision, in which it was deemed to be a criminal organisation.

Russia’s Influence-Building and Disruption in Greece: Religion as Soft and Sharp Power Tool

Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou is a faculty member at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, where directs the Initiative on Religion, Law, and Diplomacy. She is non-resident Senior Fellow and Co-Chair of the Working Group on Christians and Religious Pluralism in the Middle East, at the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, and was non-resident Senior Fellow in National Security and the Middle East, at the Center for American Progress. She is a Co-President of Religions for Peace. Prodromou served as Vice Chair and Commissioner on the U.S.

The Parthenon Projective Disturbances: From Freud and Le Corbusier to Scully and Kahn, Autobiographically

Encountering the Sacred Rock of the Athenian Acropolis has signaled for numerous historical personalities nodal processes of self-reflection conveyed autobiographically. Confronting the Parthenon emerges mostly as an enigmatic instance of unsettling revelation. Crucial, inspiring yet intricate such occurrences emerge through the announced four travelers of the title, further linked to more thinkers or artists of the 20th century, deeply affecting their respective fields and us.

Russian Émigrés and their Impact in Interwar Greece

The victory of the Bolshevik Red Army over its opponents forced thousands of Russians to abandon their homes and pursue their lives in exile. Embarking on a long period of transit, former subjects of the Russian Empire spread across the five continents and established diasporic communities, known as Russia Abroad. This presentation will focus on one of the stops on their journey ––Greece––and will attempt to reconstruct the experiences of Russian émigrés in a country afflicted by its own refugee crisis.

Constantinopolitans and the View from the City: on Greek Diaspora, National Homeland, and Cosmopolitan Identity

The Evolution of a Nation

Between Turkish Nationalism and Greek Irredentism: The Greek Orthodox Community of Istanbul (ca. 1908-1923)

Dimitris Kamouzis is a Researcher at the Centre for Asia Minor Studies (Athens, Greece). He received his PhD in History at the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, King’s College London. He has written several articles on the Greek Orthodox populations of the Ottoman Empire/Turkey and is co-editor of the collective volume State – Nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Turkey: Orthodox and Muslims, 1830-1945 (Oxon: SOAS/ Routledge Studies on the Middle East, 2013).