The Future of Modern Greek Studies in Higher Education in the United Kingdom: Lost in Academia?

Abstract

This paper presents1 an account of the situation of Modern Greek Studies in the United Kingdom within the context of the wider changes in the British academic system and the status of language learning in British Universities. It outlines the lack of teaching resources and other practical problems associated with Modern Greek programs such as the secondment of teachers from Greece and the difficulties students face during their year abroad in Greek Universities. It also questions the placement of Modern Greek Studies programmes within academic units like Classics or Hellenic Studies and then makes some suggestions for the future.

The virtual tourist gaze in Greece, 1897–1905

“…Literary studies (Buzard, 1993;Mahn, 2012): overviews of travel writing in the nineteenth century 6. Modern Greek studies (Hamilakis & Brown, 2003;Tziovas, 2006): critical discussions of the history and production of knowledge about Greece 7. Tourism studies (Cheong & Miller, 2000;Maoz 2005;Tribe, 2006): critical discussions of tourism and interdisciplinarity, and theories of the gaze In addition to this, critical research into interdisciplinarity has pointed to the productive potential in bringing knowledge from different areas into contact rather than generate a new, fixed methodology (Barthes, 1993;Darballey & Stock, 2012;Huggan, 2008;Moran, 2010).…”

“…Specific attention has been paid to the impact of Byron in creating a repertoire of images for consumption, which in itself caused anxiety for tourists keen to experience the real Greece: "Byron's Tales laid the foundation for an enduring paradox of philhellenism: the desire for Greece to become Western and the simultaneous rejection of Westernization in Greece as inauthentic" (Roessel, 2002: 52). 12 However, perhaps the most significant contribution in the field has come from the discipline of Modern Greek Studies which has sought to interrogate the ways in which Ancient Greece has been valued beyond the present; as Tziovas has highlighted, Greek is the only contemporary European language that needs to be qualified by the prefix "Modern" (Gourgouris, 1996;Hamilakis & Brown, 2003;Tziovas, 2006). A key figure in the development of Modern Greek Studies as an international discipline has been the anthropologist Herzfeld (1987).…”