She is a third-generation Greek-American with roots in Constantinople, East Thrace and Siatista, Macedonia, and grew up outside of Boston in a large Greek community. Four of her grandparents arrived in the US between 1912 and 1920, all refugees.

UC Berkeley Professor of History Cristina Filiou, Director of the University’s Modern Greek and Ottoman Turkish Language Programs, gifted in communication, passionate about Greece, passionate about her subject – specializes in the political, social and cultural history of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey and Greece as manifestations of the post-Ottoman world – she gladly agreed to talk, although her day was already busy.

In addition to her academic and writing duties, she is busy for another reason: a $1 million donation from the Modern Greek Language Foundation, overseen by its president, Chris Kanios, to the university’s Modern Greek Language Program to establish the Nikos Kazantzakis Visitor Center. Scholar program, which will officially start in 2023.

The donation and program, she says, will expand the legacy of Nikos Kazantzakis, attract new audiences and rekindle interest on the world stage not only for the Cretan writer, but more broadly for contemporary Greek history, literature and contemporary Greek culture. .

Kazantzakis and the USA

Her exposure to Kazantzakis came at an early age when she saw his books in English translation in the family library. But the same is not true for much of her generation. “I think we can safely say that very few non-Greek Americans under 60 know about Kazantzakis,” he tells us.

He was therefore thrilled by the foundation’s desire to honor him, as he was one of the most prolific Greek prose writers of the 20th century, and his work was better known outside of Greece than other Greek prose writers, mainly, he says, through cinema. . “The character of Alexis Zorba has become almost a caricature of the Greeks in the minds of the older generation of Americans,” he comments. “However, what is important is that Kazantzakis was able to describe Greek identity as a whole – from its beautiful side to its ugly side – and show that everything was part of the human experience,” he adds. “A true humanist who was able to embrace both the darkness and the light of modern Greece. This is an example of a critical study of the recent Greek past and perhaps the conflicts in Greek society, the study of which will lead us to a deeper knowledge of Greece.

I am proud that we have a large number of students enrolled in Modern Greek courses.

We ask her if there is any interest from young researchers in the field of modern Greek studies. “I am proud that we have a large number of students enrolled in Modern Greek classes here at Berkeley, in the first year of Greek we often have over 20 students, an extremely high number for a language that is rarely taught,” he said. answers.

Berkeley has undergraduate and postgraduate research programs related to modern Greece, and this summer Turkish students studied in Crete thanks to scholarships provided to the university by agencies and institutions such as the Modern Greek Research Foundation, the Elios Foundation, etc. a .

“I believe that attracting Turkish students to Greece and promoting the study of the Greek language, Greek history and politics is one of the most important things we can do to improve understanding and change the current situation between Greece and Turkey,” he emphasizes. “As the program develops, we are adding courses that combine Greek topics with broader topics from the Middle East, Europe, and the Mediterranean, creating opportunities for Berkeley students to study in Greece.”

Christina Philou learned her first Greek words at the age of 17 and approached the language halfway, as she speaks, like a foreigner. Her interest in cultural politics, in the experience of refugees from Asia Minor in Greek politics, raised questions about the Ottoman past of Greeks and the origins of both Greek and Turkish nation-states in the late Ottoman Empire. She continued to improve her Greek and learned modern and Ottoman Turkish. “In the course of my career, I have studied all levels of connections, conflicts and parallels between the Greek and Turkish nation-states in Ottoman history,” he emphasizes.

Academic Dialogue

She completed her PhD at Princeton, then the only place in the US to study Greek and Ottoman Turkish, and wrote her dissertation and the first book on the role of the Phanariot elite in Ottoman rule during the Greek Revolution (“Biography of Empire: Governing the Ottoman Empire in the Age of Revolution” ), published in Greek by the Alexandria publishing house. As a member of the American university community, he has taught the Middle East, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Ottoman Turkish history, always including Greece in one way or another.

“Therefore, I think it is understandable why I sought to establish at Berkeley two programs in dialogue with each other: Modern Greek Studies on the one hand, and Ottoman Turkish Studies on the other. I wanted to create a field where we could ask new questions about Greek history and culture and take a fresh look at conflicts with Ottoman and Turkish history and culture. I believe this is the best strategy to rekindle the interest of the US academic community and, in addition, to make Greece and its exciting history interesting for a new generation of students and a much wider readership.”