History
The Modern Greek Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley was launched in Spring 2021. The University of California, Berkeley has long been a locus for the study of Hellenic culture, history, language, and literature of all time periods: its Classics department is recognized as a leader in the field; its Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archeology, inaugurated more than fifty years ago, is the oldest interdisciplinary program for the study of Greek antiquity and the ancient world at large in American academia. UC Berkeley is home to the Sara B. Aleshire Center for the Study of Greek Epigraphy. In addition, it maintains three excavation programs in Greece, at Mycenae, Nemea, and Aidonia. The Center for the Tebtunis Papyri is custodian of the largest collection of papyrus texts in the Americas, with an important research focus on the Greek papyri of the Byzantine period. Beyond the traditional chronological confines of “classics”, faculty members teach and research the period known as Late Antiquity (Susanna Elm, Todd Hickey), Byzantine history (Maria Mavroudi), Byzantine art (Diliana Angelova), and the history of Greeks under Ottoman rule and in modern Greece (Christine Philliou).
We are very excited to expand the scope of these activities to the modern era and to the Greek diaspora. We are particularly interested in language, literature, culture, history and politics of post-classical Greece (including the Byzantine, Ottoman, and modern periods) and Greek-speaking communities in the diaspora past and present.
Affiliated Faculty
Katerina Linos, School of Law
Refugees in Greece, public policy, international and comparative law
Maria Mavroudi, History
Byzantine cultural and intellectual history
Nikolaos Papazardakas, Classics
Greek epigraphy
Christine Philliou, History
Ottoman-era and modern (post-Ottoman) Greek history