Gonda Van Steen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1293897 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gonda Van Steen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gonda |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Steen |
| SIGNATURE | VAN STEEN G |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6743-7608 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Between a Bloc and a Far Place
This article analyses the complexities of post-war humanitarian assistance to Greece that took the form of child placement. It humanises the 1970s human rights discourse by studying a case of Greek-to-American adoption and interrogates humanitarian interventions by tracing the tensions among the protagonists, who were situated at unequal levels of power. It shows how a growing resistance that contested Cold War interventions could only find its r…
The Face of Forced Consent in Postwar Adoptions from Greece
This article explores the nature of forced consent in 1950s child adoptions from Greece to the United States. It contributes to critical adoption studies by centering the lesser-known “sending country” of Greece and by drawing from a rare combination of biographical data and testimonies, microhistorical contexts, and otherwise scant archival sources. At stake is the exceptionally well-documented treatment of a Greek birthmother who consented to t…
Adoption Agrafa, Parts ‘Unwritten’ About Cold War Adoptions from Greece
This essay focuses on the Greek adoptees’ search for identity and on the agrafa, or the “unwritten” territories, into which this search penetrates. The Greek adoptees represent an underresearched case study of the postwar intercountry adoption movement (1950–1975). Creating a narrative of the self is key to the adoptees’ identity formation, but their personal narrative is often undermined by stereotypes and denunciations that stunt its developmen…
Adoption Agrafa, Parts “Unwritten” About Cold War Adoptions from Greece
This essay examines relationships between adoptees and the (extended) adoptive family, focusing on the inheritance rights of adopted persons as entry points into levels and cycles of their belonging and un-belonging. The essay contextualizes a case report (or summary reports) on the kind of estrangement in the adoptee world that is fueled by inheritance disputes. It delves into postadoption perceptions and thus into the “unwritten” truths about a…
Derek Dodson
The British Major Derek Dodson left a unique record of the Allies' entry into Thessaloniki at the time of the German withdrawal from the city in October 1944. The record is preserved among Dodson's papers, which are held at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King's College London. Dodson's report reveals a widening gap dividing the various Greek resistance groups and also a perceived need on the part of the British to act decisively…
The Materialities of “Adop‐thing
Since 2013, I have been studying the “historic” adoptions of children who were born in Greece but were sent for adoption to the United States. These adoptions affected some 4,000 Greek‐born children and took place between 1950 and 1975, an era during which minors hardly left any sources behind. I argue that these adoptions have proven to be all but “historic” for those people who lived through them. One of the most forgotten aspects of a forgotte…
Adoption Agrafa, Parts “Unwritten” About Cold War Adoptions from Greece
This preliminary empirical study delves into the “agrafa”, the “unwritten” or “uncharted” parts of a Greek adoption phenomenon and Greek–American relations that may, however, still be accessed via archival investigations, mixed research methods, and efforts to hone life writing skills. At stake is the case of the post-WWII adoptions of some 4000 Greek children who were sent to the United States between the years 1950 and 1975. This study asks how…
Στη δίνη της Χιακής καταστροφής (1822)· Διασταυρούμενες ιστορίες και συλλογική ταυτότητα [Entangled histories and collective identity
Sculpture as Literature and History
This paper focuses on the sculpture of the Venus de Milo, a chance find of 1820, but a token discovery in the fermentation brought on by the growing tensions between the Ottoman administrative hierarchies, the foreign diplomats, the Greek intellectuals and yet aspiring revolutionaries, and the local populations of the Aegean islands. For lack of an ancient history of the Venus, antiquarianism, treasure-hunting, archival evidence, and Greek revolu…
Of foundlings and “lostlings”
Le 5 mai 1959, le mouvement des adoptions internationales d’après-guerre alors en pleine expansion a été touché par un premier grand scandale, qui a pour la première fois fait parler de « trafic de bébés ». Au cœur de ce scandale, qui portait sur des enfants grecs adoptés par des parents adoptifs résidant aux États-Unis, se trouvait Stephen S. Scopas, un éminent magistrat de New York, accusé d’avoir vendu une trentaine d’enfants grecs, ce qui fit…
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
Different students respond to different stimuli. Visual material is highly persuasive in the teacher’s aim to have students with varying levels of knowledge respond to seemingly abstract topics such as the public role of theater. A multi-sensory approach helps to push the limits of student knowledge and curiosity beyond ancient Greek history and culture into the similarly rich but lesser-known modern Greek realm. A Socratic teaching style further…
Snapshots of Aristophanes and Menander
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Theatre of the Condemned
Introduction: Collectivity within the Confines of an Island 1. Selections, Occasions, Origins, and Objectives 2. Makronisos: Island of the 'Greek Inventors of Barbarian Evils' 3. Female Prisoners Learning (in) Defiance: What's Playing on Trikeri? 4. The Prison and the Past as Theatre: Aeschylus 'Persians' on Ai Stratis, September 1951 5. 'Suspect Always Like the Truth': The 'Antigone' of Aris Alexandrou 6. Alexandrou's 'Antigone' (Greek text and …
The Audacity of Truth
This article offers a thematic reading of the Antigone play that the Greek poet Aris Alexandrou finished writing in 1951, while pushed into isolation on the prison islands for leftist detainees of the Greek Civil War. It also discusses the 2003 stage production of the play by director Victor Arditti and the State Theatre of Northern Greece. Alexandrou's free adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone delivers the complex other side of the radical resistan…
Selections, Occasions, Origins, and Objectives
The first chapter of this book introduces the practical or organizational framework of classical tragedy staged on the prison islands of the Civil War (Makronisos, Trikeri, Aï Stratis). It also points to changes in the conditions of imprisonment in the various locales and over time and to differences in the treatment of men and women. This chapter also builds links forward and backward in time, which is essential for many reasons: the internees' …
Alexandrou's Antigone Translated into English
The Venus de Milo
W hen, how, and why did M arcellus obtain the V enus de Milo? What took priority in his subsequent experience of remembering, and writing about, his act of acquisition? Surely it is problematic that Marcellus, whose narratives follow a regimen of Orientalist representation, saw himself as a philhellene and regarded his act of collecting ancient art as a philhellenic contribution? I use the Frenchman’s account as a case study that has a prismatic …
Makronisos
Chapter 2 discusses the productions of ancient drama that were staged on Makronisos: it presents a diptych of two productions that reveal different levels of involvement on the part of actors, artists, inmate observers—and the camp keepers. Our analysis of the Antigone production that the authorities both encouraged and advertised is followed by a discussion of a more “genuine” Philoctetes (both staged in 1948). The chapter also concentrates on t…
Theatre of the Condemned
Many studies have been written on the Greek Civil War's political causes, characteristics, and repercussions, but Greece's theater history of those years seems to have been largely forgotten. This is unfortunate because the events of those decades have shaped the native Greek stage as well as the revival stage ever since. The theatrical debate then mirrored the contemporary turmoil and brought forth new readings of the ancient plays. This book in…
Female Prisoners Learning (in) Defiance
Chapter 3 features what is clearly a more national but also an increasingly international dialogue and exchange of ideas on tragic heroes like Prometheus, despite the remoteness of the prison islands. Chapter 3 focuses on the productions—or attempts at productions—of the female exiles of Trikeri and also on their alternative educational and cultural expressions, which tended to bring gender into the equation. The women's theater on Trikeri contai…
Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire
Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire explores two key historical episodes that have generally escaped the notice of modern Greece, the Near East, and their observers alike. In the midst of the
Rallying the Nation
This study offers brief soundings into the exploitation of sport by the Greek dictatorial regimes, both the interwar dictatorship of 1936–1941 and the military regime of 1967–1974. During those eras, sport provided templates of competition and combat. The most recent dictatorship showcased sport along with a ‘canon’ of historical re-enactments in massive open-air spectacles, which deserve further attention. The strongmen of both regimes saw, in a…
‘You Unleash the Tempest of Tragedy’
This chapter contains section titled: Introduction The Players Offstage and the Greek Language Turned Protagonist The Unbearable Foreign Identity of an Oresteia The Greek, the Bad and the Ugly A German Antigone Conclusion
Politics and Aristophanes
'The cultural moment I most regret having missed is the heyday of Aristophanes,' begins Joshua Kosman, music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle , in an article from 16 February 2003 entitled 'Ancient Greek Fun'. He explains that Aristophanes' comedies may well be the most 'context-dependent' works of literature of the past three thousand years, because the playwright drew his humour from the multi-layered political and cultural life of fifth-…
The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre
This series of essays by prominent academics and practitioners investigates in detail the history of performance in the classical Greek and Roman world. Beginning with the earliest examples of 'dramatic' presentation in the epic cycles and reaching through to the latter days of the Roman Empire and beyond, this 2007 Companion covers many aspects of these broad presentational societies. Dramatic performances that are text-based form only one part …
Venom in Verse
1. Poisoned Gift from Antiquity: Aristophanes as Paravase of Koraes' Nationalist Ideology Ch. 2. Aristophanes in Modern Greek: A Demotic, Satirical, and Theatrical Paravase Ch. 3. The Lysistrata Euphoria of 1900 to 1940: Sexual and Antifeminist Paravase Ch. 4. Koun's Birds of 1959: Paravase of Right-Wing Politics Ch. 5. Framing, Clowning, and Cloning Aristophanes Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
Adoption Agrafa, Parts “Unwritten” About Cold War Adoptions from Greece
This essay examines relationships between adoptees and the (extended) adoptive family, focusing on the inheritance rights of adopted persons as entry points into levels and cycles of their belonging and un-belonging. The essay contextualizes a case report (or summary reports) on the kind of estrangement in the adoptee world that is fueled by inheritance disputes. It delves into postadoption perceptions and thus into the “unwritten” truths about a…
Rallying the Nation
This study offers brief soundings into the exploitation of sport by the Greek dictatorial regimes, both the interwar dictatorship of 1936–1941 and the military regime of 1967–1974. During those eras, sport provided templates of competition and combat. The most recent dictatorship showcased sport along with a ‘canon’ of historical re-enactments in massive open-air spectacles, which deserve further attention. The strongmen of both regimes saw, in a…
Rolling out the red carpet
Adoption Agrafa, Parts ‘Unwritten’ About Cold War Adoptions from Greece
This essay focuses on the Greek adoptees’ search for identity and on the agrafa, or the “unwritten” territories, into which this search penetrates. The Greek adoptees represent an underresearched case study of the postwar intercountry adoption movement (1950–1975). Creating a narrative of the self is key to the adoptees’ identity formation, but their personal narrative is often undermined by stereotypes and denunciations that stunt its developmen…
Adoption Agrafa, Parts “Unwritten” About Cold War Adoptions from Greece
This preliminary empirical study delves into the “agrafa”, the “unwritten” or “uncharted” parts of a Greek adoption phenomenon and Greek–American relations that may, however, still be accessed via archival investigations, mixed research methods, and efforts to hone life writing skills. At stake is the case of the post-WWII adoptions of some 4000 Greek children who were sent to the United States between the years 1950 and 1975. This study asks how…
Aspects of « Public Representation » in Aristophanes' Acharnions
Van Steen Gonda A. H. Aspects of « Public Representation » in Aristophanes' Acharnions. In: L'antiquité classique, Tome 63, 1994. pp. 211-224
Destined to Be ? Tyche in Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe and in the Byzantine Romance of Kallimachos and Chrysorroi
Van Steen Gonda A. H. Destined to Be ? Tyche in Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe and in the Byzantine Romance of Kallimachos and Chrysorroi. In: L'antiquité classique, Tome 67, 1998. pp. 203-211
Venom in Verse
Aristophanes has enjoyed a conspicuous revival in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Greece. Here, Gonda Van Steen provides the first critical analysis of the role of the classical Athenian playwright in modern Greek culture, explaining how the sociopolitical "venom" of Aristophanes' verses remains relevant and appealing to modern Greek audiences. Deriding or challenging well-known figures and conservative values, Aristophanes' comedies transgress…
“The world’s a circular stage”
Venom in Verse
1. Poisoned Gift from Antiquity: Aristophanes as Paravase of Koraes' Nationalist Ideology Ch. 2. Aristophanes in Modern Greek: A Demotic, Satirical, and Theatrical Paravase Ch. 3. The Lysistrata Euphoria of 1900 to 1940: Sexual and Antifeminist Paravase Ch. 4. Koun's Birds of 1959: Paravase of Right-Wing Politics Ch. 5. Framing, Clowning, and Cloning Aristophanes Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
Rolling out the red carpet
‘You Unleash the Tempest of Tragedy’
This chapter contains section titled: Introduction The Players Offstage and the Greek Language Turned Protagonist The Unbearable Foreign Identity of an Oresteia The Greek, the Bad and the Ugly A German Antigone Conclusion
Politics and Aristophanes
'The cultural moment I most regret having missed is the heyday of Aristophanes,' begins Joshua Kosman, music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle , in an article from 16 February 2003 entitled 'Ancient Greek Fun'. He explains that Aristophanes' comedies may well be the most 'context-dependent' works of literature of the past three thousand years, because the playwright drew his humour from the multi-layered political and cultural life of fifth-…
The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre
This series of essays by prominent academics and practitioners investigates in detail the history of performance in the classical Greek and Roman world. Beginning with the earliest examples of 'dramatic' presentation in the epic cycles and reaching through to the latter days of the Roman Empire and beyond, this 2007 Companion covers many aspects of these broad presentational societies. Dramatic performances that are text-based form only one part …
Selections, Occasions, Origins, and Objectives
The first chapter of this book introduces the practical or organizational framework of classical tragedy staged on the prison islands of the Civil War (Makronisos, Trikeri, Aï Stratis). It also points to changes in the conditions of imprisonment in the various locales and over time and to differences in the treatment of men and women. This chapter also builds links forward and backward in time, which is essential for many reasons: the internees' …
Alexandrou's Antigone Translated into English
The Venus de Milo
W hen, how, and why did M arcellus obtain the V enus de Milo? What took priority in his subsequent experience of remembering, and writing about, his act of acquisition? Surely it is problematic that Marcellus, whose narratives follow a regimen of Orientalist representation, saw himself as a philhellene and regarded his act of collecting ancient art as a philhellenic contribution? I use the Frenchman’s account as a case study that has a prismatic …
Makronisos
Chapter 2 discusses the productions of ancient drama that were staged on Makronisos: it presents a diptych of two productions that reveal different levels of involvement on the part of actors, artists, inmate observers—and the camp keepers. Our analysis of the Antigone production that the authorities both encouraged and advertised is followed by a discussion of a more “genuine” Philoctetes (both staged in 1948). The chapter also concentrates on t…
Theatre of the Condemned
Many studies have been written on the Greek Civil War's political causes, characteristics, and repercussions, but Greece's theater history of those years seems to have been largely forgotten. This is unfortunate because the events of those decades have shaped the native Greek stage as well as the revival stage ever since. The theatrical debate then mirrored the contemporary turmoil and brought forth new readings of the ancient plays. This book in…
Female Prisoners Learning (in) Defiance
Chapter 3 features what is clearly a more national but also an increasingly international dialogue and exchange of ideas on tragic heroes like Prometheus, despite the remoteness of the prison islands. Chapter 3 focuses on the productions—or attempts at productions—of the female exiles of Trikeri and also on their alternative educational and cultural expressions, which tended to bring gender into the equation. The women's theater on Trikeri contai…
Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire
Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire explores two key historical episodes that have generally escaped the notice of modern Greece, the Near East, and their observers alike. In the midst of the
Rallying the Nation
This study offers brief soundings into the exploitation of sport by the Greek dictatorial regimes, both the interwar dictatorship of 1936–1941 and the military regime of 1967–1974. During those eras, sport provided templates of competition and combat. The most recent dictatorship showcased sport along with a ‘canon’ of historical re-enactments in massive open-air spectacles, which deserve further attention. The strongmen of both regimes saw, in a…
Theatre of the Condemned
Introduction: Collectivity within the Confines of an Island 1. Selections, Occasions, Origins, and Objectives 2. Makronisos: Island of the 'Greek Inventors of Barbarian Evils' 3. Female Prisoners Learning (in) Defiance: What's Playing on Trikeri? 4. The Prison and the Past as Theatre: Aeschylus 'Persians' on Ai Stratis, September 1951 5. 'Suspect Always Like the Truth': The 'Antigone' of Aris Alexandrou 6. Alexandrou's 'Antigone' (Greek text and …
The Audacity of Truth
This article offers a thematic reading of the Antigone play that the Greek poet Aris Alexandrou finished writing in 1951, while pushed into isolation on the prison islands for leftist detainees of the Greek Civil War. It also discusses the 2003 stage production of the play by director Victor Arditti and the State Theatre of Northern Greece. Alexandrou's free adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone delivers the complex other side of the radical resistan…
Snapshots of Aristophanes and Menander
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
Different students respond to different stimuli. Visual material is highly persuasive in the teacher’s aim to have students with varying levels of knowledge respond to seemingly abstract topics such as the public role of theater. A multi-sensory approach helps to push the limits of student knowledge and curiosity beyond ancient Greek history and culture into the similarly rich but lesser-known modern Greek realm. A Socratic teaching style further…
Of foundlings and “lostlings”
Le 5 mai 1959, le mouvement des adoptions internationales d’après-guerre alors en pleine expansion a été touché par un premier grand scandale, qui a pour la première fois fait parler de « trafic de bébés ». Au cœur de ce scandale, qui portait sur des enfants grecs adoptés par des parents adoptifs résidant aux États-Unis, se trouvait Stephen S. Scopas, un éminent magistrat de New York, accusé d’avoir vendu une trentaine d’enfants grecs, ce qui fit…
Στη δίνη της Χιακής καταστροφής (1822)· Διασταυρούμενες ιστορίες και συλλογική ταυτότητα [Entangled histories and collective identity
Sculpture as Literature and History
This paper focuses on the sculpture of the Venus de Milo, a chance find of 1820, but a token discovery in the fermentation brought on by the growing tensions between the Ottoman administrative hierarchies, the foreign diplomats, the Greek intellectuals and yet aspiring revolutionaries, and the local populations of the Aegean islands. For lack of an ancient history of the Venus, antiquarianism, treasure-hunting, archival evidence, and Greek revolu…
Adoption Agrafa, Parts “Unwritten” About Cold War Adoptions from Greece
This preliminary empirical study delves into the “agrafa”, the “unwritten” or “uncharted” parts of a Greek adoption phenomenon and Greek–American relations that may, however, still be accessed via archival investigations, mixed research methods, and efforts to hone life writing skills. At stake is the case of the post-WWII adoptions of some 4000 Greek children who were sent to the United States between the years 1950 and 1975. This study asks how…
Art (21 works) · History (18 works) · Literature (18 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Contemporary and Historical Greek Studies (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Archaeology (8 works) · History (8 works)