Topics in Modern Greek Literature

This course will examine three instances of dislocation of populations living in homelands from which they had to be forcibly separated for the sake of homogeneity: ethnic, political, cultural. The material will focus on the dynamics of traumatic ruptures, and on how the selected fiction and poetry reflect the emotional impact of such divisions and dislocations. These instances of forced mobilizations include the 1923 formal exchanges of population of the Greek minority from the newly dismantled Ottoman Empire and of the Turkish minority from Greece. Through the material for this course, we will also address the expulsion of the Jewish minority from the cities of Salonica and Ioannina to prison camps in the Balkans during the Second World War. Finally, we will bring to focus the internal political and ideological division of Greece, between the Right and the Left, during the Greek Civil War; a division which resulted in the mobilization of northern Greek populations and their fleeing into Communist states. Regarding the latter, we will focus on instances of repatriation and the ensuing government projects to separate and “re-educate” the Left in the prison camps of designated islands. The literary texts will be contextualized by the history of Greece, Ottoman as well as modern, and by separate historical accounts for each one of the population movements. Both, fiction and poetry, will be also contextualized by essays in psychology and theory.

Greek texts will be also available in English translation. 

History and theory will be available in English.

Films are in English or with English subtitles.