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Fall 2025 Courses
Elementary Modern Greek I, Nikolas P. Kakkoufa
GRKM UN1101 - 4 Points
M/W 12:10-2:00 PM
This is the first semester of a year-long course designed for students wishing to learn Greek as it is written and spoken in Greece today. As well as learning the skills necessary to read texts of moderate difficulty and converse on a wide range of topics, students explore Modern Greece's cultural landscape from "parea" to poetry to politics. Special attention will be paid to Greek New York. How do "our", "American", "Greek-American" definitions of language and culture differ from "their", "Greek" ones?
Intermediate Modern Greek I, Chrysanthe Filippardos
GRKM UN2101 - 4 Points
M/W 6:10-8:00 PM
This course is designed for students who are already familiar with the basic grammar and syntax of modern Greek language and can communicate at an elementary level. Using films, newspapers, and popular songs, students engage the finer points of Greek grammar and syntax and enrich their vocabulary. Emphasis is given to writing, whether in the form of film and book reviews or essays on particular topics taken from a selection of second-year textbooks.
The Culture of Democracy, Stathis Gourgouris
CLGM 3920 - 3 Points Cross-listed with ICLS
Th 12:10-2:00 PM
The point is to examine democracy not as political system, but as a historical phenomenon characterized by a specific culture: a corpus of ideas and values, stories and myths. This culture is not homogeneous; it has a variety of historical manifestations through the ages but remains nonetheless cohesive. The objective is twofold: 1) to determine which elements in democratic culture remain current, no matter what form they take in various historical instances; 2) to understand that the culture of democracy is indeed not abstract and transcendental but historical, with its central impetus being the self-interrogation and self-alteration of society.
Dictatorships and their Afterlives, Dimitris Antoniou
CLGM UN3110 - 3 Points Global Core, Cross-listed with ICLS
T 12:10-2:00 PM
What does the investigation of a dictatorship entail and what are the challenges in such an endeavor? Why (and when) do particular societies turn to an examination of their non-democratic pasts? What does it mean for those who never experienced an authoritarian regime first-hand to remember it through television footage, popular culture, and family stories? This seminar examines dictatorships and the ways in which they are remembered, discussed, examined, and give rise to conflicting narratives in post-dictatorial environments. It takes as its point of departure the Greek military regime of 1967-1974, which is considered in relation to other dictatorships in South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. We will be drawing on primary materials including Amnesty International reports, film, performance art, and architectural drawings as well as the works of Hannah Arendt and Günter Grass to engage in an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which military dictatorships live on as ghosts, traumatic memories, urban warfare, litigation, and debates on the politics of comparison and the ethics of contemporary art.
Multilingual Worlds: Translation, Gender and the Greek Diaspora, Karen Van Dyck
CLGM GU4600 - 4 Points Global Core, Cross-listed with ICLS
T 10:10-12:00 PM
This course introduces students to the rich tradition of literature about and by Greeks in America over the past two centuries exploring questions of multilingualism, translation, migration and gender with particular attention to the look and sound of different alphabets and foreign accents– “It’s all Greek to me!” To what extent can migration be understood as translation and vice versa? How might debates in Diaspora and Translation Studies inform each other and how might both, in turn, elucidate the writing of and about Greeks and other ethnic minorities, especially women? Authors include Olga Broumas, Elia Kazan, Alexandros Papadiamantis, Ellery Queen, Eleni Sikelianos, Irini Spanidou, and Thanasis Valtinos as well as performance artists such as Diamanda Galás. Theoretical and comparative texts include works by Walter Benjamin, Rey Chow, Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka, Toni Morrison, and Lawrence Venuti, as well as films such as Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant and The Wizard of Oz. No knowledge of Greek is necessary, although an extra-credit directed reading is open to those wishing to read texts in Greek.
The Hybrid Voice: Comparative Diasporas and Translation, Karen Van Dyck and Brent Edwards
CPLS GR6111/ICLS 10882 - 3 Points Cross-listed with ICLS
T 2:10-4:00 PM
This seminar will focus on the theory and practice of translation from the perspective of comparative diaspora studies. We will read some of the key scholarship on translation and diaspora that has emerged over the past two decades focusing on the central issue of language in relation to migration, uprooting, and imagined community. Rather than foregrounding a single case study, the syllabus is organized around the proposition that any consideration of diaspora requires a consideration of comparative and overlapping diasporas, and as a consequence a confrontation with multilingualism, creolization and the problem of translation. After some weeks devoted to theoretical resources, we will look at a range of literary representations of language-crossing and mixing in diaspora, especially in terms of their lessons for the theory and practice of translation. The final weeks of the course will be devoted to a practicum, in which we will conduct an intensive workshop around the translation projects of the student participants.
Supervised Independent Research, Nikolas P. Kakkoufa GRKM GU4460 01
Supervised Independent Research, Stathis Gourgouris GRKM GU4460 02
Supervised Independent Research, Dimitris Antoniou GRKM GU4460 03
Supervised Independent Research, Karen Van Dyck GRKM GU4460 04
Supervised Independent Research, Paraskevi Martzavou GRKM GU4460 05
Directed Readings, Nikolas P. Kakkoufa GRKM UN3997 01
Directed Readings, Stathis Gourgouris GRKM UN3997 02
Directed Readings, Dimitris Antoniou GRKM UN3997 03
Directed Readings, Karen Van Dyck GRKM UN3997 04
Directed Readings, Paraskevi Martzavou GRKM UN3997 05
Senior Research Seminar, Nikolas P. Kakkoufa GRKM UN3998