Forty years after its end, the Greek military junta of 1967-1974 and its context remain largely under-examined. Divisions over the evaluation of the past endure, family stories of troubling allegiances circulate, and personal accounts and memories of the period are debated in everyday conversations. Yet, a systematic and open inquiry of the socio-cultural dimensions of this time-period is particularly urgent as well as overdue, given its centrality for the understanding of contemporary Greece.

With the exception of a few scholars’ attempts to examine the dictatorship as a contemporary phenomenon in the early 1970s and more recent studies of distinct aspects of the period (e.g. censorship, student movements, state persecution, diplomatic relations), little archival and ethnographic research on the topic has been pursued. Moreover, no systematic research of the legacies of this period has been undertaken, allowing for the proliferation of a variety of taboos, oversimplifications, and projections. How can we account for this absence and what are its consequences for contemporary understandings of Greece, both academic and popular? What is at stake when the past is considered on the basis of under-examined presumptions?

At a time when economic failure and socio-political upheaval are frequently viewed as inherent pathologies of parliamentary democracy and with the extreme right on the rise throughout much of Europe, this two-day workshop aims to map existing scholarship and initiate new research on the Colonels’ regime and its afterlives. In particular, we seek to provide a forum for scholars and students of diverse disciplinary backgrounds to think collaboratively about the historical, political, social, literary, and psychological frames through which the dictatorship articulates with the present. To this end, we encourage the presentation of research that brings new insights to the study of the dictatorship, makes use of archival and ethnographic data, and emphasizes comparative approaches regarding the past and its reappraisals at present. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

- acquiescence, consensus, support
- violence and persecution
- tropes of resistance
- gender and sexuality
- witnessing, silences
- aesthetics, politics, and economics of the regime
- continuities and ruptures
- transnational dimensions
- transition to democracy and processes of de-juntification
- public history
- former actors as history narrators, memory mediations
- representations in literature and film
- afterlives

Papers will be pre-circulated and participants will be expected to read the workshop’s material and respond to presentations. Emphasis will be placed on discussing papers and outlining new avenues for research. Paper abstracts (up to 350 words) should be submitted to juntaworkshop2015@gmail.com by December 15, 2014.

Organizing Committee: Dimitris Antoniou, Karen Van Dyck, Kostis Kornetis, Mark Mazower, Anna- Maria Sichani, Katerina Stefatos