The Production of Greek American Heritage

It was in the early 2000s when Steve Frangos gave a name in the then emerging cultural phenomenon of grass roots activism to preserve community history and heritage. He called it “a new preservation movement.” Since that time this activism has been burgeoning, the question of preservation propels all kinds of projects: production of oral histories and documents (production and not collection because the knowledge one gets about the past depends on the questions one asks); documentaries; conferences; archives, writings of histories. The question of preservation inevitably raises an array of sub-questions: who decides what merits preservation? What heritages have been historically neglected or even censored? Why is it that some major archival projects have not been supported by our organizations celebrating heritage? Why some of our institutions assigned with the mandate to produce historical memory have been notoriously selective in their curation? I have not seen a serious reflection in the Greek American public sphere on these issues though I hope it exists. 

Preservation projects often attach value to their work by asking how the pasts they produce help answer the (identity) question “who we are”––which obviously can only be answered in plural. We cannot genuinely explore this question without openly and self-reflectively engaging with the sub-questions I indicate above. Who are we when we routinely celebrate heritage but lack a substantive national policy and the allocation of funds for its (inclusive) research, documentation, analysis and broad dissemination?

These were my thoughts two nights ago while listening to the interview Meletios Poulopoulos, founder of the Greek Cultural Resources (https://greekculturalresources.org/index.html), gave for the Oral History Archives of the Hellenic American Project at Queens College, CUNY. Let us really listen to what he is telling us (https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1182953000332084&set=a.135519291742132). It should be the starting point for a broader conversation, action, and policy.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

September 25, 2025