Topics in Modern Greek Literature

What is historical trauma? How does it shape communities and individual lives, including those born generations after a traumatic event? How do literature and film grapple with history, knowledge, representation, and time in the wake of a traumatic event? How can creative practices facilitate the work of survival and repair? How have states instrumentalized and standardized trauma narratives with the aim of creating a coherent national identity? In this seminar, we will attend to the reverberations of trauma in Greek literature and film in the century following the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), World War I (1914-1918), the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), and the Population Exchange (1923-1924). This period of prolonged violence, loss, and the catastrophic Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey created a refugee crisis that entailed forced deportation, displacement, migration, and resettlement. As communities on both sides were expelled from their homes, and as they suffered the loss of life on a vast scale, the Population Exchange produced a crisis of belonging, identity, and survival. Taking the period of 1919-1924 as a starting point, we will trace the aftereffects of this historical trauma—as well as its interactions with new forms of violence—in twentieth- and twenty-first century Greek history, including the Occupation of Greece during WWII (1941-1944), the Greek Civil War (1945-1949), dictatorship (1967-1974), and practices of border-making and border-crossing. We will supplement our discussions of Greek literature and film with essays on historical trauma, loss, and war drawn from the disciplines of literary studies, history, and psychoanalysis.

Assigned readings will be available in English translation. Films will be accompanied by English subtitles. Seminar discussions will take place in English. Students wishing to work on their Modern Greek composition skills may submit supplemental writing in Greek as an additional exercise.

Assignments include one short paper (5-7 pages), one long final paper (10-12 pages), weekly bCourses postings, and a collaborative creating writing piece assembled in class. Attendance is required.

Authors: Stratis Myrivillis, Dido Sotiriou, Ilias Venezis, Costas Taktsis, Yiannis Ritsos

Filmmakers: Michael Cacoyannis, Lila Kourkoulakou, Theo Angelopoulos, Costas Ferris, Menelaos Karamaghiolis, Panos Koutras, Constantinos Giannaris, Yorgos Lanthimos

Other Readings: Sigmund Freud, Jean Laplanche, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Cathy Caruth, Ruth Leys, Shoshana Felman, Marianne Hirsch, William Stroebel