Synopsis

This talk discusses an unknown chapter of Greek history: the mass adoptions of Greek children to the USA and to the Netherlands starting in 1948 and lasting through the 1960s. Their number totals some 4,000 children and many of them have been searching for their records and roots to this day. Adoption intermediaries played a critical role in the earliest waves of this historic overseas adoption movement, for devising the blueprint of mass international adoption and, regrettably, for letting some of its systemic mistakes happen. My presentation will cover the history of this adoption movement, the genealogical challenges it entails, and also the ways in which questions of the past may still be resolved.

Bio

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 many articles and 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; Stage of Emergency: Theater and Public Performance under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967-1974, and Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece (2019, in Greek: Ζητούνται παιδιά από την Ελλάδα: Υιοθεσίες στην Αμερική του Ψυχρού Πολέμου, 2021). She most recently edited and published The Battle for Bodies, Hearts and Minds in Postwar Greece: Social Worker Charles Schermerhorn in Thessaloniki, 1946-1951.

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