Kostis Karpozilos

Mary Seeger O’Boyle Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2014-2015

  • Degree
    Ph.D., History, University of Crete, 2010
    Dissertation
    Greek-American Workers, the Communist Movement and Labor Unions: In Search of Labor Americanism in the Years of Great Depression (1900-1950)
    Research Project
    An exercise in forgetting: Metapolitefsi and Modern Greece

Kostis Karpozilos earned his doctoral degree from the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Crete in 2010. His thesis focused on revolutionary diasporas in the United States and the trajectory of Greek-American radicalism in the 20th century. He is the scriptwriter of the documentary Greek-American Radicals: the Untold Story (2013) and the author of a book on the Cretan socialist intellectual Stavros Kallergis (Benaki Museum, 2013). He was (2012-2014) a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University (Stavros Niarchos Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program) and he has taught at the University of the Peloponnese, at Sciences Po and at Columbia University. His current research engages with the role of political imagination in times of crisis and the contingencies of the transition from the 1967-1974 military dictatorship to the establishment of the Third Greek Republic in June 1975

About the Research Project

An exercise in forgetting: Metapolitefsi and Modern Greece

Metapolitefsi , the founding moment of the Third Greek Republic, casts its shadow over contemporary Greece: the present-day crisis questions the success of the 1974 transition from the military dictatorship to Democracy. Taking into account the emerging public debate regarding the Metapolitefsi my research aims to discuss the future of Democracy in times of crisis and the ways collective memory interplays with political imagination. Focusing on the historical contingencies of the transition from the military dictatorship to the Third Greek Republic I will address the complicated legacy of authoritarianism in the Greek setting and the collective amnesia that shaped the dominant narrative of Metapolitefsi in times of prosperity and political stability.

Publications

  • Red America: Greek Communists in the United States, 1920-1950
    Berghahn,
  • Κόκκινη Αμερική: Έλληνες μετανάστες και το όραμα ενός νέου κόσμου 1900-1950
    University of Crete,

Previous Roles

  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow
    2014 - 2015