[MGSA-L] New book out: The Usable Past ed. by Brown and Hamilakis

[Roland Moore]

Here is an example of a new publication announcement, provided by
Melanie Allred of Lexington Books (Rowman, Littlefield, Lanham, MD):

The Usable Past: Greek Metahistories 

Edited by K.S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis 

Series: Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches  


In this volume, K.S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis bring together scholars
of history, archaeology, and anthropology to explore the located and
contextual nature of historical narratives. The contributors analyze
contested historic rituals, building styles, and traditions-looking
through the unique lens of twentieth-century Greek identity-paying
particular attention to the ways these social phenomena and cultural
artifacts manifest tension between "official" and "unofficial"
narratives of the past. Though focused on the changing historical basis
of Greek culture and identity, this work further serves as an important
theoretical contemplation of how our view of the past is shaped by our
relationship with the present.  


Table of Contents:

The Cupboard of Yesterdays? Critical Perspectives on the Usable Past by
K.S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis 

I. Projects: The State in Action 

1. Monumental Visions: the Past in Metaxas' weltanschauung by Philip
Carabott 

2. "Learn History!" Antiquity, National Narrative, and History in Greek
Educational Textbooks by Yannis Hamilakis 

3. The Politics of Currency: Stamps, Coins, Banknotes, and the
Circulation of Modern Greek Tradition by Basil C. Gounaris

II. Fractures: Resisting the National Narrative 

1. The Macedonian Question in the 1920s and the Politics of History by
Patrick Finney 

2. Recollecting Difference: Archive-Marxists and Old Calendarists in an
Exile Community by Margaret E. Kenna

3. The Ethnoarchaeology of a "Passive" Ethnicity. The Arvanites of
Central Greece by John Bintliff 

III. Conversations: From Past to Present 

1.    Dimitris Pikionis and Sedad Eldem: Parallel Reflections of
Vernacular and National Architecture by
 Eleni Bastéa  

2. Spaces in Tense: History, Contingency, and Place in a Cretan City by
Thomas M. Malaby 

3. Poked by the 'Foreign Finger' in Greece: Conspiracy Theory or the
Hermeneutics of Suspicion? By David Sutton 

Afterword by Loring M. Danforth 


K.S. Brown is Assistant Professor at the Thomas J. Watson Institute for
International Studies at

Brown University and lecturer in Anthropology at the University of
Wales, Lampeter. Yannis

Hamilakis is lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Southampton. 


November 2002 225pp

0-7391-0383-0 Cloth $70.00

0-7391-0384-9 Paper $26.95