Words, practices, ethos, performances, material culture, rhythms, and rhymes pulling me into affective and political identifications with Greek/America
• Ethos (Devotion, Determination, Hard Work, Writing and Cultural Activism as Vocation)
Greek American scholars and authors working
well into their youthful old age contributing to
the understanding of Greek America (Thomas
Doulis, Dan Georgakas, Helen Papanikolas,
Harry Mark Petrakis, Elaine Thomopoulos)
• Family
I never loved my father the way I loved him at
• Family
I never loved my father the way I loved him at
that moment (a paraphrase, until I locate the
exact statement)
[Johnny Otis about his Greek immigrant father
attending Otis’s wedding ceremony (amidst his
mother’s resolute opposition) with Phyllis
Walker, an interracial union.]
• “Folk Heritage”
• “Folk Heritage”
“Every argument has a rebuttal (O logos ehei
antilogo)” [frequent saying by a woman in a
family connected with Greek/American
migration, early 1910s] (1)
• Labor
Immigrant waiters and dishwashers in U.S.
• Labor
Immigrant waiters and dishwashers in U.S.
Greek restaurants
• Memoir / Personal Recollections
“Unfortunately, the occasional experience of
• Memoir / Personal Recollections
“Unfortunately, the occasional experience of
even the best of Greek folk life isn’t enough to
constitute an identity or a way of life. If that
was all there was to it, it would have been
better to get away and leave it all behind as
many did. …
One day, when I was in my early teens, I went
into a bookstore and saw a book entitled The
Greek Passion sitting next to the cash register.
It was the first time I’d seen a book with the
name of a living Greek on it. The clerk told me
a Greek priest had ordered it but hadn’t come
to pick it up. Our priest, the only one for all of
Montana, had died of a heart attack a few
weeks earlier, so I offered to buy it. It’s hard to
explain the effect the novel had on me. I was
actually in contact with a real Greek author,
someone at least as well educated as the
people who taught me in school. And the book
was a lot more interesting and relevant to me
than most of the literature we were assigned to
read” (2).
• Music
• Music
“I Rather Set Myself on Fire,” Anna Paidoussi
and Acroama – at 4:00
• Poetry–Bilingualism–Translation
Poet George Economou performs his translation of Michalis Katsaros' poem “Those you see”/Aftous pou vlepeis.
• Politics of Religion
“What our struggle for theosis most demands is
• Poetry–Bilingualism–Translation
Poet George Economou performs his translation of Michalis Katsaros' poem “Those you see”/Aftous pou vlepeis.
• Politics of Religion
“What our struggle for theosis most demands is
a politics of empathy. What can this look like?
… In imagining what it is like to be in the body
of a Black person in the USA, perhaps we can
see more clearly the structures in place that
facilitate the inequality among persons. Those
Orthodox Christians who say that Blacks
should just “improve their culture” (yes—I’ve
heard this), do not have a sufficiently
theological understanding of sin and its
insidious and lingering social effects. Is it
really that easy, as an example, to will a better
life for those who find themselves judged
unemployable for a job or unworthy of a
promotion because of their skin color–much as
some Orthodox Christians in a not so distant
past?” (3).
• Scholarship
“Good literature requires good criticism, which
• Scholarship
“Good literature requires good criticism, which
combines an appreciative grasp of an author’s
gift with a critical understanding of its effects
on readers and a probing eye for what lies
beyond” (4).
• Translation
• Translation
“First the shipyards in New York gave way, fell
to their knees and dragged into their effluence
two and a half thousand workers, the books
couldn’t be balanced unless new orders came
in, and whatever the wartime industry had built
with zeal during those years of conflict and
unrest was quickly destroyed by the popular
demand for a new world, a better, more
peaceful world, and a year or two later, after
Nixon assumed the reins of power, the RCA
Victor plant closed, too, and that music-loving
terrier set its sights on Mexico and cheap labor,
with management blaming the unions, which
had been on indefinite strike seeking better
wages, and the unions blaming management for
putting profits above everything else, and the
whole city was left bereft of jobs, five thousand
people fired in a single week in a city of ninety
thousand, and thus in the mid-70s the diner that
had been renamed 'Ariadne,' with the name
Mickievitch still visible underneath, and the
off-white columns painted above the colorful
Greek Salad and the mouthwatering Gyro
Plate, stopped being what it was and promised
to be, as the decline in free enterprise and the
continuing war in Vietnam drove the city into
crisis and residents in the jumble of
neighborhoods became distrustful, and
whoever remained in the recently thriving city
moved to the burgeoning suburbs, first the
Jews, then the Italians and Greeks, while her
parents, her very own parents, remained
immutably optimistic, and in their optimism
immutably unmoving, sunk their heels in like
mules and watched as their savings blew away
on the wind, and their dreams vanished once
on the wind, and their dreams vanished once
and for all” (5)
• Writing
“Or so the oppressive elements in Greek and
• Writing
“Or so the oppressive elements in Greek and
Greek American circles would have me
believe. For in fact I have much more—as a
Greek, a Greek with the gift of an education, I
have great riches, and access to a long tradition
of Greekness that has a very colorful history of
gender dualism and hybridity, one that was
eliminated from the tired single story. What I
do not have is the right to cede to nationalists,
and to essentialist discourses, all power over
what it means to be Greek. It is my
responsibility to help keep alive the memory of
that richness, keep the definition of Greekness
wide.” (6)
• Photography
• Photography
Spaces of Greek America, by ARC,
• Material Culture
Louis Tikas, in Colorado
• Material Culture
Louis Tikas, in Colorado
Sources
(1) Efthalia Makris Walsh. 2000. Beloved Sister: Biography Of A Greek-American Family, Letters From The Homeland, 1930-1948. Tegea Press. P. 43.
(2) E. D. Karampetsos. 2005. “Preface.” Charioteer: An Annual Review of Modern Greek Culture, Special issue, The Greek American Experience, Guest Editor, E. D. Karampetsos, No. 43: 5–8.
(3) Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Racism: An Orthodox Perspective,” Public Orthodoxy, January 18, 2018, accessed March 5, 2018,
(4) Artemis Leontis. 2003. “‘What Will I Have to Remember?’ Helen Papanikolas’s Art of Telling.” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora Vol. 29 (2), 25.
(5) Karen Emmerich. 2017. Excerpts from the novel Dendrites [by Kallia Papadaki]. 28 December. Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters.
(6) Joanna Eleftheriou. 2019. “Black Stone.” 25 August. Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters.
(1) Efthalia Makris Walsh. 2000. Beloved Sister: Biography Of A Greek-American Family, Letters From The Homeland, 1930-1948. Tegea Press. P. 43.
(2) E. D. Karampetsos. 2005. “Preface.” Charioteer: An Annual Review of Modern Greek Culture, Special issue, The Greek American Experience, Guest Editor, E. D. Karampetsos, No. 43: 5–8.
(3) Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Racism: An Orthodox Perspective,” Public Orthodoxy, January 18, 2018, accessed March 5, 2018,
(4) Artemis Leontis. 2003. “‘What Will I Have to Remember?’ Helen Papanikolas’s Art of Telling.” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora Vol. 29 (2), 25.
(5) Karen Emmerich. 2017. Excerpts from the novel Dendrites [by Kallia Papadaki]. 28 December. Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters.
(6) Joanna Eleftheriou. 2019. “Black Stone.” 25 August. Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters.