Transatlantic Subjects: Acts of Migration and Cultures of Transnationalism between Greece and America

by Ioanna Laliotou

Overview

The early twentieth century was marked by massive migration of southern Europeans to the United States. Transatlantic Subjects views this diaspora through the lens of Greek migrant life to reveal the emergence of transnational forms of subjectivity.

According to Ioanna Laliotou, cultural institutions and practices played an important role in the formation of migrant subjectivities. Reconstructing the cultural history of migration, her book points out the relationship between subjectivity formation and cultural practices and performances, such as publishing, reading, acting, storytelling, consuming, imitating, parading, and traveling. Transatlantic Subjects then locates the development of these practices within key sites and institutions of cultural formation, such as migrant and fraternal associations, educational institutions, state agencies and nongovernmental organizations, mental institutions, coffee shops, the church, steamship companies, banks, migration services, and chambers of commerce.

Ultimately, Laliotou explores the complex and situational entanglements of migrancy, cultural nationalism, and the politics of self. Reading against the grain of hegemonic narratives of cultural and migration histories, she reveals how migrancy produced distinctive forms of sociality during the first half of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226468570
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	01/15/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ioanna Laliotou is a lecturer in contemporary history in the Department of History, Archaeology, and Social Anthropology at the University of Thessaly, Greece.

Table of Contents

Introduction
From History to Subjectivity: Migrants, Globality, and Culture in the Twentieth Century
Part One: The Immigration Problem
1. Technologies of Self: Nativism, Cultural Pluralism, and "America"
2. The Migrant Remitted
Part Two: Imagination
3. Short Stories of Migration and the Literary Process in Diaspora
4. The Exhibition of Subjectivity: Migrant Performances and Parody Acts
Part Three: Mnemonics
5. Bios and Subjectivity: Life Stories in Migration
6. The History of Migration: Autobiographical Writing and Historiography
Afterword: History in Future Anterior
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index