The study of modern Greece in a changing world: fading allure or potential for reinvention?

Abstract

Periodically reviewing developments in a subject area and reflecting on the past and future directions of a discipline can be useful and instructive. In the case of Modern Greek Studies, this has rarely been done, and most of the reviews of the field come from USA.1So I take this opportunity to offer some thoughts on what has propelled changes in the field over the last forty years, on the fruitful (and occasionally trenchant) dialogue between Neohellenists inside and outside Greece and on the future of modern Greek studies as an academic discipline. During this period modern Greek studies have flourished with a number of new trends, debates and scholarly preoccupations emerging. At the same time many research students received their doctorates from departments of Modern Greek Studies, particularly in the United Kingdom, and were subsequently appointed to teaching posts at Greek, Cypriot or other European, American and Australian universities. Modern Greek departments in the UK have often been the driving force behind the discipline since the early 1980s. New approaches were introduced, challenging ideas were debated and influential publications emerged from those departments, which shaped the agenda for the study of modern Greek language, literature and culture. It should be noted that the influence of those departments in shaping the direction of modern Greek Studies has been out of all proportion to the number of staff teaching in them.