| FB-50028-04 | Research Programs: Fellowships for College Teachers and Independent Scholars | Loring M. Danforth | Homelands, Real and Imaginary: Refugee Children from the Greek Civil War | 9/1/2004 - 8/31/2005 | $40,000.00 | Loring | M. | Danforth | | | | President and Trustees of Bates College | Lewiston | ME | 04240-6028 | USA | 2003 | Anthropology | Fellowships for College Teachers and Independent Scholars | Research Programs | 40000 | 0 | 40000 | 0 |
In 1948, at the height of the Greek Civil War, the Greek Communist Party and the Greek government evacuated approximately 43,000 children from war-torn villages in northern Greece to "children's homes" in Eastern Europe and in central and southern Greece. I plan to write a book that will analyze the experiences of these refugee children in light of recent theoretical work in anthropology dealing with refugees, diaspora communities, and the role of homelands, both real and imaginary, in the construction of ethnic, national, and transnational identities. This book will offer ethnographically based and theoretically informed insights into the multiple meanings of "place" and "home" in the lives of refugees. It will also enhance our understanding of the complex process of identity construction among displaced people struggling to create new forms of collective identity that transcend the ethnic and national identities that have proven so powerful and so destructive in the recent past. |