DIRECTOR’S BOOKSHELF
An Agora of Ideas
Seeger Center Director Dimitri Gondicas in conversation with historian Kostis Karpozilos
The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies supports more than a dozen fellows each year who conduct intensive research at Princeton. Former Seeger fellows have published hundreds of books with leading publishers and thousands of articles. Their scholarship reflects the broad, interdisciplinary nature of Hellenic studies, spanning fields from history to religion to literature and periods from antiquity to the present.
In the May 28, 2024, edition of Director’s Bookshelf, Seeger Center Director Dimitri Gondicas speaks with Kostis Karpozilos about Red America: Greek Communists in the United States, 1920-1950, published by Berghahn Books in February 2023. Karpozilos is a historian whose work concerns the history of the Left, focusing on experiences of displacement, exile, and mobility. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Seeger Center in the 2014-15 academic year.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
How did this book project begin?
As an undergraduate student in Thessaloniki more than twenty years ago, I came across a Greek-language communist newspaper from the 1930s published in New York City. This discovery challenged my perception of the Greek American community as a conservative one. It also sparked questions about the social and political history of the United States. These questions led to a doctoral thesis exploring the interplay between immigration and radicalism. I argued that the immigrant experience was central to shaping the American Left.
When I finished my Ph.D. in 2010, Greece was experiencing the consequences of the financial crisis. I never thought I would have the resources to transform my dissertation into a book. Like many others of my generation, I left Greece. I was fortunate to work as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia and then Princeton. These positions offered me the ideal conditions to revisit my research and begin a book project.
Please tell us about your time at the Seeger Center and the research you conducted then.
My time at the Seeger Center holds a special place in my heart. Greece was on the brink of radical change, with the Left coming to power. All possibilities seemed open. These developments coincided with the expansion of my horizons at the Seeger Center. I took advantage of the intellectual community and the vast Hellenic collections at Firestone Library. I remember staying in the library for hours and then returning to my office to write.
In that atmosphere, I felt that time was on my side. It wasn’t a solitary journey, though. The Seeger Center creates a positive and productive vibe that unleashes unexpected intellectual and mental potential! This is a privilege.
How did that research impact your work as a whole and this book project?
I agree with the Seeger Center’s understanding of Greek history – a transnational and dynamic approach. I had never thought of my project as a “Greek” or even an “American” one, but this was instinctive. At the Seeger Center, I clarified my understanding, not in an abstract or bibliographical way, but conceptually.
What would you like your readers to learn?
To quote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “history does nothing.” While I am skeptical of what we can learn from history, Red America can help us revisit an epoch where the quest for a “New World” initiated a dialogue between immigrants seeking such a world in the United States and revolutionaries promising that the “New World” would arrive through radical social change. Today, the immigrant, the refugee, and the outsider are often cast as victims. By contrast, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Left saw these figures as protagonists fulfilling the prophecy of those “who have nothing to lose but their chains,” as Marx and Engels wrote.
Here lies my book’s second lesson: there is no teleology in history. Anything is possible. And this does not necessarily lead to an optimistic story. It is a story of disillusionment and defeat. This is, after all, the history of immigrant radicalism in the United States.
A transformative journey to Greece inspired Stanley J. Seeger to found Hellenic Studies programs at Princeton. Please tell us about a journey that expanded your intellectual horizons or influenced your research.
I recall my first visit to the Statue of Liberty as a tourist. Reading Emma Lazarus’ famous poem, I noticed the invitation to “the wretched” of the Old World to American shores. Suddenly, I made an important connection. The opening line of the late-19th-century English translation of the Internationale contains the same word: “arise, wretched of the earth.” This was the key I sought: the dialogue between the Statue of Liberty and the Internationale, a famous communist and socialist anthem. It was a call to the invisible, the marginalized, and the exploited to become the protagonists of historical development and thrive in the New World they deserved.
Photo of Dimitri Gondicas by Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy. Photo of Kostis Karpozilos by Dimitris Kapantais.