43rd Annual Walton Lecture: Kindergarten Teacher Formation in the 1910s: An Early Form of Female Professionalism in Asia Minor

About the lecture

Kindergarten Teacher Formation in the 1910s: An Early Form of Female Professionalism in Asia Minor

What were possible vocational and professional options for girls from the Greek-Orthodox urban populations of Asia Minor in the early 20^th century, particularly from settlements where these were not represented in strong numbers and were largely bilingual in Turkish and Greek? Keeping in mind the complex ethno-confessional and linguistic underpinning of the subject and the competing educational actors in the area, the lecture will focus on: a. female professionalization and the feminization of preschool and elementary education as a characteristic of modernization in both the late Ottoman Empire and Greece; b. agency of the women themselves — as well as their families — in educational and career choices before and after the traumatic experience of forced migration; c. a biographical approach that highlights both collective characteristics of a specific group and individual life trajectories of educated working women in the 20^th century.

About the speaker

Maria A. Stassinopoulou, born 1961 in Athens, is professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna. She holds a BA (1984) from the University of Athens and a PhD (1990) and Habilitation (2001) from the University of Vienna. She taught as visiting professor at European universities in the Erasmus framework and at Brown University, RI. She has received fellowships and grants and led research teams. She is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She publishes on historiography and the history of ideas of the 18^th and 19^th century, the economic and social history of Greek cinema and the history of early modern migration particularly between the Ottoman and the Habsburg Empire. 

Recent publications include: [with Olga Katsiardi-Hering, eds.] Across the Danube: Southeastern Europeans and Their Travelling Identities (17^th-19^th C.), Leiden-Boston 2017; [with Nathalie Soursos and Stefano Saracino, eds.] “Imperial Subjects and Beneficence. Comparing Endowment Cultures from the 17th to the early 20th Century”. Endowment Studies (ENDS) 2017/18, Special Issue; “Of Mice, Men and Greek Film Noir: The Little Mouse”, in Greek Film Noir, Anna Poupou e.a. eds., Edinburgh 2023, 46-61; “Making the Best of It. The Graduates of the Kindergarten Training College of Flaviana in Zincidere, 1911-1916”, in “Buyurdum ki….” – The Whole World of Ottomanica and Beyond: Studies in Honour of Claudia Römer, Hülya Çelik e.a. eds., Leiden-Boston 2023, 805-33; [with Georgios Chr. Tsigaras, eds.] Ιστοριογραφικές αναζητήσεις στη νοτιοανατολική Ευρώπη. Στη μνήμη του Gunnar Hering. Komotini 2024.