[MGSA-L] Reminder - Call for Participation: The Colonels' Dictatorship and its Afterlives

[Dimitris Antoniou]

Dear list members,

Please disseminate the following call for participation for a workshop on
the military regime of April 21,1967 and its afterlives to take place at
Columbia University on April 23-24, 2015. The deadline for the submission
of abstracts is December 15, 2014 and limited funding may be available to
cover travel  and accommodation expenses.

Dimitris Antoniou


Call for Participation
Workshop
*The Colonels’ Dictatorship and its Afterlives*
Columbia University, April 23-24, 2015

Program in Hellenic Studies, Columbia University
Program in Hellenic Studies & Center for European and Mediterranean
Studies, New York University

Forty years after its end, the Greek military junta of 1967-1974 and its
context remain largely under-examined. Divisions over the evaluation of the
past endure, family stories of troubling allegiances circulate, and
personal accounts and memories of the period are debated in everyday
conversations. Yet, a systematic and open inquiry of the socio-cultural
dimensions of this time-period is particularly urgent as well as overdue,
given its centrality for the understanding of contemporary Greece.

With the exception of a few scholars’ attempts to examine the dictatorship
as a contemporary phenomenon in the early 1970s and more recent studies of
distinct aspects of the period (e.g. censorship, student movements, state
persecution, diplomatic relations), little archival and ethnographic
research on the topic has been pursued. Moreover, no systematic research of
the legacies of this period has been undertaken, allowing for the
proliferation of a variety of taboos, oversimplifications, and projections.
How can we account for this absence and what are its consequences for
contemporary understandings of Greece, both academic and popular? What is
at stake when the past is considered on the basis of under-examined
presumptions?

At a time when economic failure and socio-political upheaval are frequently
viewed as inherent pathologies of parliamentary democracy and with the
extreme right on the rise throughout much of Europe, this two-day workshop
aims to map existing scholarship and initiate new research on the Colonels’
regime and its afterlives. In particular, we seek to provide a forum for
scholars and students of diverse disciplinary backgrounds to think
collaboratively about the historical, political, social, literary, and
psychological frames through which the dictatorship articulates with the
present. To this end, we encourage the presentation of research that brings
new insights to the study of the dictatorship, makes use of archival and
ethnographic data, and emphasizes comparative approaches regarding the past
and its reappraisals at present. Possible topics include but are not
limited to:

●    acquiescence, consensus, support
●    violence and persecution
●    tropes of resistance
●    gender and sexuality
●    witnessing, silences
●    aesthetics, politics, and economics of the regime
●    continuities and ruptures
●    transnational dimensions
●    transition to democracy and processes of de-juntification
●    public history
●    former actors as history narrators, memory mediations
●    representations in literature and film
●    afterlives

Papers will be pre-circulated and participants will be expected to read the
workshop’s material and respond to presentations. Emphasis will be placed
on discussing papers and outlining new avenues for research. Paper
abstracts (up to 350 words) should be submitted to
juntaworkshop2015 at gmail.com by December 15, 2014. Limited funding may be
available to cover travel and accommodation expenses.
Organizing Committee: Dimitris Antoniou, Karen Van Dyck, Kostis Kornetis,
Mark Mazower, Anna- Maria Sichani, Katerina Stefatos
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