Our intern, Maro, writes:
Have you ever wondered about research on American Studies in Greece? Well, the Department of American Literature and Culture of the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh) has not only advanced but also facilitated the study and research of the field in question by launching the American Studies Resource Portal (ASRP) in the spring of 2010. This online database, an initiative developed by the Faculty members of the Department (with the sponsorship of the Information Resource Centre, Embassy of the U.S., Greece, and AUTh) – namely Dr. Zoe Detsi (Ass.Professor), Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou (Ass. Professor) and Dr. Eleftheria Arapoglou (Adjunct Lecturer) – makes an array of sources and research material relating to American Studies available to a wide community of scholars, academics, university students, educators, independent scholars, school teachers and pupils, as well as the general public. More specifically, the site lists all the academic departments in Greece that run courses in American Studies along with the detailed description of the courses offered – either undergraduate or graduate – in American literature, politics and culture. Moreover, the portal includes an informed list of M.A. theses and the full text of Ph.D dissertations completed and in progress in the field of American Studies nationwide. An important feature of this highly searchable user friendly directory of American Studies is that it provides information for all the forthcoming conferences and events relating to American Studies as well as the HELAAS (Hellenic Association for American Studies) activities and latest publications. Finally, there are links to American Studies organizations, libraries, research centres in both Europe and the US, publications and a variety of online research resources which range from documentaries and interviews to podcasts and films.
Having been an MA student in the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for the past three years, I have found this portal extremely interesting and useful not only for the organized and carefully selected secondary material that it provided me with, but primarily because it connected me with Europe and the US, presenting me with options and opportunities on both a national and an international level. Within the framework of a collaborative project between the American Studies Resource Portal team and the Fulbright Foundation, Greece, I spent almost two months in the Fulbright headquarters in Athens researching the development of American Studies in Greece from 1948 to the present day, a research that is actually still in progress. With my internship in the Fulbright Foundation being part of a series of initiatives and projects that the ASRP team has launched, I am delighted to have been given this opportunity. What is more, I am now at the British Library as an Erasmus intern and it was the American Studies Resource Portal that allowed me to find out more about the Eccles Centre and the possibilities of an internship in the BL.
With the American Studies Resource Portal being the token of the ever-increasing national and international profile of the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University, I think that is a challenging task that came to fill in an academic vacuum with regard to the filed of American Studies in Greece, especially within the context of the growing reliance on electronic sources in a digitized international environment.
To find out more about the ASRP: http://my.enl.auth.gr/asrp
Also read the following interview: http://www.mosaiko.gr/features/our-american-studies-resource-portal/