Global Women and Hellenism Conference II

I have been following with great interest the recent Women and Hellenism conference, organized by the Australia-based Food for Thought Network (Ioannina, September 2-6, 2024). Though I wish I were attending in situ, I e-participated from afar, the United States, watching the selective vignettes featured online, in the social media and youtube.

The fact that I was only exposed to fragments from the proceedings disqualifies me from offering a comprehensive analysis of this gathering.

Still, due to the major importance of this initiative I feel compelled to share a few thoughts, necessarily tentative and partial, with the purpose of contributing, to the extent possible, to the public conversation (I anticipate) toward the understanding of this institution and its future directions.

• The conference was an exercise in polyphony, featuring a variety of points of view (voices), some venturing into questions on gender and identity in depth, others remaining on the surface, uttering platitudes. Theoretical sophistication and cliches co-existed.

• Democratic inclusion was a conscious concern of the gathering, creating an inclusive social space. I am interested in the range of this inclusion. Were contemporary working-class women an element in the polyphony and if so was there deliberation on how to address the challenges they face in the workplace as both women and wage laborers? (could working class women afford the trip to Greece and take time off from their work?) Was there a systemic analysis of the predicament of this demographic and how to institute change? [I saw several stories focusing on individual resilience, effort and work ethic in the overcoming class and patriarchal obstacles.] Were there discussions of issues of non-normative sexualities and their experiences in relation to patriarchal diasporic institutions? Were the voices of men who have been allies in women’s cause for empowerment heard? (women’s issues are a broader gender issue; and class among other social categories)

• The conference featured conflicting perspectives ranging from positions on radical feminism, calls for intersectional alliances with vulnerable populations (indigenous women) to nationalist identity narratives, and to claims about Greek exceptionalism among others. I have no sense whether (or to what extent) this produced an interactive and dialogic public sphere. For example, in an instance when a speaker (from a particular diaspora) celebrated democracy as the core of Greek identity, I wonder whether there were voices attesting that this ideal is often blatantly violated in some diasporas when it comes to representing the “community.”

• This brings us to the issue of meaningful and agonistic exchange and deliberation. In one panel I followed with interest there was no time left for the Q&A session. The speakers spoke but their (often important, and sometime radical) views were not subject to polyphonic exchange. How did members of the audience situate themselves in relation to feminism as a polyphonic phenomenon. [we know there are many feminisms.] In this instance there was no deliberation. Did the voice of a speaker advocating radical feminism make a difference on how members of the gathering understood the issue “women and social change,” and how will they be acting toward this goal in practice?

• A major purpose of the conference was to continue (spark, inspire, assert) the struggle for women’s empowerment, a noble investment for the public good. The quest for change organized the conference, an important call given the power of patriarchy to injure women, both emotionally and economically. The real and symbolic violence of patriarchy needs to be confronted in multiple fronts.

• The justifiable call for change makes this gathering a political community in the broadest sense of the term political, that is distribution of power, engagement with public issues such as gender equality. Regarding this all-important call for action, I am not clear whether the participants reflected on strategies and tactics to pursue change. Is it possible for a collective expressing ideologically irreconcilable perspectives to reach a consensus on this issue? The answer is no, which raises the issue of how the question of change is envisioned (and theorized) by this collective.

I understand the great challenge of sustaining a grass-roots collective operating under the conditions I outlined above. There is a host of potentialities and limits. Difficult decisions on how to frame the polyphony in a politically meaningful manner.

What i shared here––observations, thoughts and questions––is what I see as my constructive contribution to this conversation. The leaders of this initiative may wish to consider reflecting and theorizing the social phenomenon they are initiating and the social movement (?) they are keen to mobilizing.

The conference has been universally extolled by enchanted participants, who spoke about the thrill of participating in a collective experience injecting them with exhilarating energy. Even an e-participant could feel the vibe.

But we will benefit enormously, I believe, eventually moving beyond mere praise, and listen to the participants’ public reflections and analysis (their food for thought). In addition, as we anticipate the next iteration of this phenomenon and its future direction, community leaders may wish to consider entering into conversation with highly qualified scholars and activists working on issues of political communities, democratic pluralism, advocacy, and social change––this sort of polyphony is positioned to enrich the understanding of this important initiative for all of us.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

September 15-16, 2024

Academic Positionality (2008-2024) – A Personal Reflection

How come you never wrote a second book? a well-meaning friend asked me the other day. Years ago, I was confronted with the same question in a different context, at a crucial juncture in my professional life––it required convincing faculty otherwise, those interrogating the value of my academic trajectory. I have felt the sting of this question also in dark shades, implying lesser value for my work. Now and for different reasons, my friend’s question calls for an answer I decide to make public, a reflection about almost two decades of post-tenure life in a US public university. I do so to perhaps offer insights about a particular academic experience: operating within a relatively marginal scholarly field and how this positioning might shape the contours of a person asserting presence in the academy and beyond.

***

In 2008, around the time I completed my tenure book, I found myself at a crossroads, confronted by the inevitable question regarding the next step. Conventional academic wisdom was directing me toward a second manuscript, a prospect I was indeed contemplating. As a latecomer in the academy––PhD at the age of forty––I was told to carefully weigh on my career options. Yet certain circumstances were pulling me toward alternative paths, emerging mostly due to developments in Greek/American popular culture and issues confronting Greek American studies (GAS), an academic field to which I have devoted my academic life (2000–ongoing).

Several happenings in popular and academic culture were indeed pressing for notice. Hollywood's My Life in Ruins was released in 2009, adding one more item in my list of films I wanted to write about––the sleeper hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding (MBFGW, 2002) already “begging” for GAS attention. I was also experiencing a strong impulse to reflect on the place of diaspora studies in relation to US modern Greek studies (2010). The ways concepts such as “diaspora” were understood by an earlier generation of GAS researchers needed, I felt, addressing too. It was ripe time to critically engage with GAS canonical scholarship and propose a revisionist angle in Greek American historiography––an interest lasting up to this day. What is more, the initial impact of the “Greek economic crisis” on the homeland-diaspora relations was around the corner.

The idea of taking up “small-scale” projects was alluring, particularly given my exhaustion from having just finished a demanding book, a work produced under immense pressure. This mode of writing would offer a momentary respite, I thought, and “buy time” for my new book idea to ripen. But instead, it turned into a purposeful, long term “nomadic” approach to academic and broadly public writing.

Article-writing was given critical purpose via my cultural studies interest in examining cultural texts and practices (film, documentary, literature, ethic parades, autobiography identity narratives, etc.) as components of broader discourses (nationalism, religion, race, diaspora)––this in the context of power relations. I saw publishing in this mode a strategy to place new Greek American texts drawing national attention in connection to relevant academic conversations, positioning in this manner GAS as an active player in the process. Situating MBFGW in connection to white ethnicity (2012), for example, placed my work in a journal exploring US multiculturalism.

When the Greek economic crisis descended upon us, the role of the diaspora, not only as an agent mobilizing in solidarity with Greece, but also as a site of branding global identity, was impossible to ignore (2021, 2022). Of major importance also was the centenary of the Ludlow Massacre (2014) which generated great interest among scholars, journalists and public intellectuals working on the history of the American working class. I published about the (re)making of Cretan/Greek/American labor organizer Louis Tikas in a documentary produced in Greece (2014) as well as his poetic evocation in David Mason’s verse-novel Ludlow (2016).

Additional anniversaries were pressing for GAS critical presence. The bicentenary of the Greek revolution led to an essay reframing US philhellenism (2022) and a book chapter shifting the focus from the nation to diasporic citizenship (2023). A year later, a strong desire to honor the centenary of the Castle Gate Mine Disaster (2024) resulted in two articles and several newspaper articles in the Greek and diaspora media.

Earlier, a host of issues called for academic contributions: the MTV “Growing Up Greek” controversy (2017), for example, and the urgency to think about public humanities as a venue to explore the position of academics in relation to community discourses (2015). Of interest was the spectacularization of ethnicity and its connection with American sports, which called for examining heritage as commodity (2019). There were grass-roots initiatives to foster Greek American–African American solidarities, and then the Black Lives Matter movement and its implications for Greek America, which called for involvement (2020). Book reviews needed to be written, Helladic representations of the diaspora interrogated, popular representations of Greek American identity discussed, the post-mortem publications of deceased colleagues acknowledged (2015, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024). Personal motivation directed my experimentation with diaspora poetics in a hybrid form (2021).

Then, emerging conversations about neglected topics such as gender and sexuality (2021) pulled me to their orbit. I connected my writing about the intersection of gender, sexuality and food in the diaspora, the latter yet another gravely under-researched topic (2023). The initiative to place GAS in conversation with other diasporic studies––Italian American for instance––led to a collaboration and a co-edited volume (2022). A memorable experience in Australia resulted in writings about Greek American arts and US multiculturalism (forthcoming) and reflection on Greek Australia (2024). Greece’s strategic plan for the diaspora called for a position paper (2024), and the increasing interest in global Hellenism has generated a project in progress.

As the saying goes, one thing led to another… cascading to a frenetic academic courtship. The ebbs and flows of this route required the navigation of a terrain mostly uncharted for me. One, as you would expect, was writing about emerging and unfolding phenomena in the here and now not in a journalistic but scholarly fashion, a demanding––we all know––practice. Another was negotiating new disciplinary terrains outside “my expertise”––if I ever had any––public humanities, public diplomacy, sociology, life history, film and documentary studies; sexuality and foodways; Italian American studies.

Crossing disciplinary boundaries requires fluid versatility which is not only intellectual demanding––to the point of exhaustion––but also a venue exposing a scholar to vulnerability. The articles were written as interventions but sacrificed the depth that only the manuscript mode can dig. I was fortunate that the writing of the Contours of White Ethnicity had somewhat prepared me for this kind of “nomadic” scholarship. (Out of necessity, often, given the scarcity of research on a wide range of topic I needed to address in order to advance my work.)

The project of multicentered, border-crossing scholarship required an austere regime of reading and writing as well as tons of patience (and pleasures). The embodied memory still dripping from all this experience is the sense of being intellectually dwarfed anytime I entered a new terrain of inquiry and the scholarship animating it. There is also the fact that one does not get a ton of academic fellowships––and the privilege of spacious time for writing that comes with the package––on the virtue of articles alone. I was fortunate to enjoy research leaves granted by my public institution and two precious external Fellowships. Summers offered oases for sustained writing thousands of miles away from the (now demythologized) Ελληνικό καλοκαίρι.

It was nomadic but not directionless, random work. The overall strategy was a series of tactical critical engagements with newly circulated Greek American texts and practices and their placing in relation to broader questions about governmentality, nation-centric appropriations of the diaspora, nationalism from afar, revisionist historiography, public intellectuals, immigrant poetics, cultural hegemony and critique, identity branding, pedagogies of heritage transmission, intersections of GAS with Italian American studies.

The aim was to interrogate essentialized renderings of diaspora identity and explain the harmful political implications of these reductions. Also, to place GAS, demonstrating its value, into broader fields such as US “Mediterranean studies” or the discourse of “white ethnicity.” All along I was operating under the premise that this approach empowers the relevance of GAS in the US academy, a vital value for the institutional future of the field.

These were the potential gains motivating my work though I was well-aware that the absence of a critical mass of cultural-studies scholars in GAS risked the marginalization of this corpus (both in the US and Greece). In bleak moments I sought solace to the idea that I was at least creating a scholarly archive of a historical period––that of diasporized multiculturalism, the increasing authority of grassroots identity narratives, and an ideological investment in undermining their dominance.

This is the critical mode then that turned article-writing into my academic modus operandi. It was a practice performed in parallel with writing blogs and essays for the diaspora and Greek media (The National Herald, Neos Kosmos, TOBHMA, TA NEA, The Books’ Journal, as well as essays and editorials, both in Greek and English, in Ergon: Greek/American & Diaspora Arts and Letters, a labor of love). At the same time, I felt throughout the pull of a “diasporic drive,” to write for Greek audiences (Ο Πολίτης, Marginalia, Σύγχρονα Θέματα, chapters in edited volumes, essays in non-academic journals). [Perhaps it is time for scholars to ask academic credit for multilingual publishing––yet another laborious activity.]

In retrospect, I can now place––with relative certainty––this trajectory of nomadic scholarship in connection to the conditions defining GAS, then and now. Had the field enjoyed a critical mass of practitioners in diverse disciplines, I would have not felt the urgency for this tactical academic nomadism. Far from being a personal whim then, my academic route was a product of specific contingencies in a particular historical moment. [which explain my ongoing preoccupation with the advancement of Greek diaspora studies.]

Was all this worthwhile? There is no single answer to this question. Books, of course, bring more visibility and accolades, more invitations for talks and keynotes, more prospects for prestigious research leaves. Being at the core of the academy’s cultural capital are not disconnected from material gains. Most importantly, for me, they open opportunities for Fellowships granting invaluable time for uninterrupted writing.

Throughout all this I was conscious of the potential gains motivating my work, though I was well-aware that the absence of a critical mass of cultural studies scholars in GAS risks the marginalization of this corpus. Work is being done to expand the intellectual network fostering critical exchange among practitioners in the field.

But in the context of my own commitments and politics, the making of a corpus of writing that spoke to contemporary and emerging phenomena has been a profoundly meaningful experience. It represents the imprinting of systematic interventionist scholarship, a meaningful trade off overall for what was lost and compromised––I try to convince myself as I grapple with what should come next in the shrinking available time in the horizon …

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Acknowledgment: Dedicated with profound appreciation to all the colleagues, civic friends, and beloved friends who sustained me in the carving of my trajectory.

The Inaugural Global Women and Hellenism Conference Commences! Some thoughts

As an author with an interest in women's empowerment, I wish i were able to attend the Global Women and Hellenism conference. I will certainly be watching the proceedings online. On the occasion of the conference's commencement, several issues regarding diaspora women were following me today, powerfully. 

I am sharing for the sake of conversation, as I anticipate listening to the presenters and their framing of issues and personal experiences:

• Diaspora women authors, artists, and researchers (novelists, poetesses, academics). How their writings about issues connect with the concerns of the conference participants.

• Diaspora feminist women and their writings. How their feminisms matter in connection to the conference.

• How does knowledge about the histories, experiences and issues in the various diasporas matter (as explored, say, in Greek Australian and Greek American studies); the enduring gender segregation in diaspora organizations for example.

• Second and third generation working class women; their experiences within and outside middle class parishes.

• Women of alternative sexualities, their experiences within parishes and beyond. Working class and middle class LGBTQ women.

• Women in interracial marriages and their place in the "community."

• The Church and women

• Diaspora women of radical politics vis-a-vis the ethnic "community."

• Writings about the meanings of "Hellenism" in connection to globality, their significance in thinking about the major theme of the conference.

 

• Diaspora Greek women and their relations with Other stigmatized and exploited women.

I would welcome your sharing of the questions and thoughts you are bringing as this historical event commences.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Some basic thoughts about the practice of book reviewing

In addition to peer reviewing, book reviews are sites of major importance in knowledge production. In their best, they amplify the merits of published work, recognize their contributions and implications, identify blindspots and erroneous assumptions. In this case they require, like serious peer reviewing, considerable investment of labor (and deep knowledge). [there is an ethical dimension here, what is the volume of resources (time and energy) we owe to books requiring years to complete?] 

Unfortunately, book reviews carry little academic capital in the assessment of faculty "productivity", and for this or other reasons it is not rare that they are devalued by the academics themselves.

In the domain I work i also see a reticence for critical engagement with the material under review. As a genre, book reviews are becoming formulaic, almost predictable (a polite way to say boring), cautious not to probe "too deep," praising the merits and adding a few critical comments (often obvious) for "balance." One reason is that critique these days is seen by many authors who receive it as a personal attack and professional affront–with all the implications, we, seasoned in this kind of situations, can imagine.

Another may connect with the politics of knowledge and its material implications, the reluctance to enter into rigorous debate about methodology and interpretation may connect with the concern of displeasing certain powerful academic networks, with the reviewer facing the results (the wrath?) of their discontent. A highly mediated genre is further compromised. [obviously this is much more complex, requiring a broader discussion.]

Instead of welcoming book reviews as venues practicing critical reflection valuable for the profession, bringing attention to one's work, reflecting on its implications, pointing to weaknesses, contributing to reassessment and rethinking (and perhaps leading to a follow up article or book), many refrain from this route. An indispensable component of knowledge production is sacrificed, and we are all the lesser because of this loss.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

August 31, 2024

p.s. The issue is drawing broader attention, see https://snfphi.columbia.edu/events/what-has-become-of-critique-book-reviews-in-greece/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFBgMNleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVdU6xdMmLOpB0QxMQFBUP_mg4B7VXA19iKzj5nhqXReUhO-kGxZXJl69Q_aem_c2x05EAw4Y0hAAAGrpnhjQ