Dimitris Antoniou

Lecturer in Hellenic studies, Classics

Associate Director, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative

212-853-8241

da2500@columbia.edu
503 Fayerweather Hall

Fall 2024 Office hours: Thursdays 11a-2p (515 Hamilton Hall), Fridays 10a-11a, and by appointment

Zoom Link

Research Interests

• History and anthropology of Modern Greece

• State operation

• Political Imagination

• Architecture and public space

• Classical reception in authoritarian regimes

• Greek film

• Museum ethnography and curatorial studies

Dimitris Antoniou (D.Phil., University of Oxford, 2011) studied theology at the University of Athens, anthropology at Princeton, and oriental studies at Oxford. Before joining the Program in Hellenic Studies, he was a Faculty Research Fellow at Oxford, a Hannah Seeger Davis Fellow at Princeton, and a National Bank of Greece Fellow at LSE.

His research draws on anthropological and historical approaches to examine state operations and the making of public history in Greece. In particular, Dimitris studies unrealized government initiatives and failed architectural projects.

His monograph, Why not Build the Mosque? Islam, Political Cost, and the Practice of Democracy in Greece (forthcoming, University of Pennsylvania Press), explores the state’s failure to construct a mosque. Recent articles examine spatial absence and encounters with the unthinkable in scholarly investigations of Greece’s dictatorial past. Dimitris is curator of the Columbia University Libraries special collection, Greek Underground Press.

Selected Publications

Why not Build the Mosque: Islam, Political Cost, and the Practice of Democracy in Greece. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025.

“The Mosque and the Church: Structures, Counter-Structures, and the Topology of Identity.” In Kateryna Botanova, Christos Chrissopoulos, and Jurriaan Cooiman (eds), Culturescapes Greece, Basel: Christopher Meriam Verlag, pp. 66-75, 2017.

(with Eleni Kouki) “Making the Junta Fascist: Anti-Dictatorial Struggle, the Colonels, and the Statues of Ioannis Metaxas.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 35(2): 451-480, 2017.

“Unthinkable Histories: The Nation’s Vow and the Making of the Past in Greece.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 34(1): 131-160, 2016.

“Crisis, History, Complicity.” In Stefanos Tsivopoulos and Hilde de Bruiijn (eds.), Archive Crisis, Heijningen: Jap Sam Books, pp. 9-19, 2015.