Modern Greek benefits from a number of generous gifts, including gifts of cash and gifts-in-kind. Some donors provide annual cash gifts for both general and specific program support. Others contribute collections of books, magazines, papers, photographs, records and other media. Archives of a personal or historical nature represent another contribution to teaching and research. Modern Greek also benefits from the hospitality of friends who host events for students, faculty and the general public. Gifts can be found in the U-M Library and the Modern Greek department library.
Books and Archives
Collections of papers have been given from Dan Georgakas, George Economou, Eva Catafygiotou Topping, and Jim Pyrros. A major collection of books is from the library of Eleni Vakalo. Books are regularly donated by many authors in Greece and the United States. Collections of books have also been given by Helen Kolias and by Vassilis Lambropoulos and Artemis Leontis.
The family of George Caryotakis gave to the Modern Greek Program on permanent loan copies of the original publication of two poetry collections, Νηπένθη (1921) and Ελέγεια και σάτιρες (Athens: Rallis, 1927) signed by their author, Kostas Karyotakes, one of the great Greek poets of the modern era.
Eva Catafygiotu Topping, Harvard trained classicist and scholar best known for her lectures and writings on women in the Orthodox Church, was recorded in a three hour interview in 2004. A marvelous storyteller, she filled her oral account of her life -- in which she never missed a beat -- with anecdotes of growing up Greek Orthodox in a Baptist Church; studying classics at Radcliffe-Harvard when fellow Greek American women were barred by parents from attending college; lecturing on Byzantine hymnography; and speaking out, often to unsympathetic ears, about what she called repeatedly the "second-class status of women in the Orthodox Church."
Greek-American writer George Economou donated the archive that he used to produce his book, Ananios of Kleitor: Poems & Fragments and Their Reception from Antiquity to Present (2009). The University has deposited his collection in our U-M Graduate Library Papyrus Collection to encourage parallel readings between ancient and modern documents as well as comparative readings of different periods of Greek history, from the classical to the Roman to the medieval to the modern era. Visit George Economou's personal website.
Urban expressionist painter Sam Karres, donated a series of his sketchbooks. His drawings, mostly in pen and ink, illuminate his city of Detroit, and support the study of Greek America.
The Pyrros Papers, a collection on the anti-junta struggle dealing with the colonels' coup and the dictatorship in Greece from 1967-1974 and efforts to affect U.S. policy, were donated by James G. "Jim" Pyrros to the Labadie Collection of Social and Political Protest Literature, University of Michigan Hatcher Graduate Library Special Collections on December 19, 2000. The collection consists of four 2 x 4 foot boxes of files in chronological order dating from the early 1960s to the end of 1975.
Institutions:
- Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (U.S.A.), Inc.
- Benaki Museum
- Center for Neo-Hellenic Studies (S.N.H.)
- European Capital of Culture – Patras 2006
- Hellenic Republic Ministry of Culture and Tourism
- Hellenic Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Hellenic Tourism Organization
- Hellenic American Union
- Greek Film Center
- Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive (E.L.I.A)
- Modern Greek Studies Association
- Peloponnesian Folklore Institute
- The Press Office of the Embassy of Cyprus in Washington, DC
- The Publications Office of the Hellenic Parliament
- National Book Centre of Greece
- The Goulandris Cycladic Art Foundation
