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The Childhood, Law & Policy Network (CLPN)

Professor Gonda Van Steen

Gonda

Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature, Dept. of Classics, King’s College London + Director, Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London, United Kingdom

Email: gondavs@gmail.com

Profile

Gonda Van Steen holds the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature in the Department of Classics at King’s College London. She is the author of five books: Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece; Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire; Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands; and Stage of Emergency: Theater and Public Performance under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967-1974. Her latest book, Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece (2019), takes the reader into the uncharted terrain of Greek adoption stories that become paradigmatic of Cold War politics and history. Forthcoming is The Battle for Bodies, Hearts and Minds in Postwar Greece: Social Worker Charles Schermerhorn in Thessaloniki, 1946-1951.

Research

Publications

Most recent book: Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece (University of Michigan Press, 2019). Forthcoming is The Battle for Bodies, Hearts and Minds in Postwar Greece: Social Worker Charles Schermerhorn in Thessaloniki, 1946-1951.

Expertise

Ancient Greek language and literature, especially drama
Modern Greek language, literature, history, and memory, especially relating to adoption and the public sphere
Modern productions of classical Greek theater: performance criticism, reception, authoritarianism and censorship, gender studies, theater and its impact on the history of ideas, cultural study and criticism
Western travelers to Greece and the Ottoman Empire, Philhellenism and Orientalism
Greek archaeology, heritage studies, and the politics of the past
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