The University Library is happy to share the news of the publication of Gonda Van Steen's edited volume of Charles Schermerhorn's memoir describing his work providing humanitarian aid in postwar Greece. The Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection holds the Schermerhorn papers, which contain, in addition to his memoir, a wealth of photos, correspondence, reports, and other materials.
You are cordially invited to attend a live Zoom talk by Prof. Van Steen about the book on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. (The event will be recorded and archived on the Hellenic Research Fellowship Program (HRFP) page under Other Visiting Scholars.)
Date: Jan. 23, 2024
Time: 9-10 a.m. Pacific time
Access: Online
Meeting ID: 890 7478 3895
Passcode: 119111
Title: "Five Years of Feeding: A Recently Published New Source on the Living Conditions of the Children of Late 1940s Greece"
Abstract: On 17 May 1946, the American social worker Charles Schermerhorn arrived in Greece. He arrived at a critical time: Greece had just come out of a brutal Nazi German Occupation and was about to engage in a three-year-long and devastating civil war (1946-1949). Charles was appointed by UNNRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), subsequently by the Near East Foundation, and eventually by UNICEF. That means that, in the course of a mere five years, Charles saw a tremendous amount of American-influenced administrative and logistical planning for Greece, which was a focus of intense early Cold War friction and scrutiny. Charles’ own appointment as an UNRRA child welfare specialist attests to a Western-imported and hegemonic humanitarian model, which had to serve as an antidote to the rise of Soviet-style communism in Southern Europe and the Balkans. The global focus of the time was on children: they held the future of their respective societies and, as adults, would determine whether a nation would align itself with the West or with the East.
Bio: Gonda Van Steen holds the Koraes Chair in the Centre for Hellenic Studies and the Department of Classics at King’s College London. She is the author of five books: Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (2000); Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire (2010); Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands (2011); and Stage of Emergency: Theater and Public Performance under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967-1974 (2015). Her latest book, Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo? (University of Michigan Press, 2019), takes the reader into the new, uncharted terrain of Greek adoption stories that become paradigmatic of Cold War politics and history. This book appeared also in Greek translation as Ζητούνται παιδιά από την Ελλάδα: Υιοθεσίες στην Αμερική του Ψυχρού Πολέμου (Athens: Potamos, 2021). These adoptions from Greece to the USA are among the oldest (and already fraught) postwar international adoptions (3,200 children between 1948-1962) and merit further study.