Boy Meets Boy and Girl Meets Girl: Foregrounding the Greek American Queer Narrative

UNIVERSITY SEMINAR IN MODERN GREEK

Greek-American identity, Orthodoxy and heteronormativity have often been interlinked in Greek-American studies with the role of the omnipotent Greek Orthodox dogma straightjacketing gender roles and castigating any “deviations” from the norm. In the world of fiction, the first quarter of the 21st century sees the publication of a handful of Greek-American queer narratives; these are either novels with autobiographical strokes following their author’s confessions or memoirs that come to enrich the ethnic canon with the memoirist’s voice and experiences, gradually dispelling the myth of heteronormativity. This seminar explores the few but noteworthy published works and addresses the following questions:  How do the authors portray queerness with regard to Greek Americanness? How is their queerness received by their heteronormative ethnic milieu? How do these works, re-forge and shape what has been circumscribed as Greek-American identity and where does this writing belong-being queer and ethnic- after all?

This seminar is co-organized by the Program in Hellenic Studies and Ergon.