Universität Wien

090060 VO Memory and Displacement: Greece, Turkey, Cyprus (2025S)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 9 - Altertumswissenschaften
Moodle
We 19.03. 16:00-17:30 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock

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Details

Language: English

Examination dates

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Wednesday 26.03. 16:00 - 17:30 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 02.04. 16:00 - 19:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 30.04. 16:00 - 17:30 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 07.05. 16:00 - 17:30 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 21.05. 16:00 - 17:30 Ort in u:find Details
  • Wednesday 28.05. 16:00 - 17:30 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 04.06. 16:00 - 17:30 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 11.06. 16:00 - 17:30 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 18.06. 16:00 - 19:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 25.06. 16:00 - 17:30 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

The Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and Population Exchange, displacing over 1.5 million people, have profoundly shaped the region for many decades to come. This course will address the legacies of these events in their wider historical context through the lens of cultural memory studies. What cultural and historical paradigms have the Greco-Turkish War and Population Exchange bequeathed to national and transnational practices of border-making and heritage-claiming over the past century, and how have subsequent experiences reshaped the original paradigm? How do memories of war and displacement find their way into cultural representations that provide a language as well as a form for public recollection? Can memories of the past serve as a toolkit to address the present? These are some of the questions that the course addresses in relation to the history of Greece, Turkey and Cyprus across the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Aims
• Gain an understanding of the memory studies framework and apply it to the case study of the Greco-Turkish War and Population Exchange
• Distinguish between different roles that cultural memories of a specific event can play on local, national and transnational levels
• Study different forms of cultural media – testimonies, literary works, film, news media – in relation to the formation and circulation of cultural memories

Assessment and permitted materials

Final written in person exam with five open-ended questions, out of which the students will have to answers two questions of their choice (100%). Additionally, students can opt for a presentation (15% extra of the final mark).

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

The students must demonstrate good grasp of historical context, apply theoretical knowledge gained in class and present their arguments in clear and coherent manner.

Examination topics

The students will have a chance to acquaint themselves with possible exam questions and discuss them with peers during the course.

Reading list

Sample reading list (detailed list and specific book chapters/articles to be provided on Moodle):
Assmann, Aleida. 2006. “Memory, Individual and Collective”. In The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly, 211-224.
Demetriou, Olga. 2018. Refugeehood and the Postconflict Subject: Reconsidering Minor Losses. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Gedgaudaitė, Kristina. 2021. Memories of Asia Minor in Contemporary Greek Culture: An Itinerary. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Halstead, Huw. 2018. Greeks without Greece: Homelands, Belonging and Memory amongst the Expatriated Greeks of Turkey. Abingdon: Routledge.
Hirsch, Marianne. 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York, NY; Chichester: Columbia University Press.
Hirschon, Renee. 2023 [ 1989]. Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus. New York, NY; Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Iğsız, Aslı. 2018. Humanism in Ruins: Entangled Legacies of the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Neyzi, Leyla. 2014. “Remembering Smyrna/Izmir: Shared History, Shared Trauma”. History and Memory 20(2): 106-127.
Özkırımlı, Umut and Spyros A. Sofos. 2008. Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey. London: Hurst & Company.
Stroebel, William. 2025. Literature‘s Refuge: Rewriting the Mediterranean Borderscape. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Th 27.02.2025 14:06