Dr Konstandina Dounis

General Editor, SeaRiver Pres

dr.konstandina.dounis@gmail.com

Of Work and Words: Post-war Greek immigrant women’s experience of work as encapsulated in the literary offerings of Greek-Australian women writers

Abstract

Greek women, particularly those living in the poverty-stricken rural areas of Greece – a country decimated by two world wars and a civil war – left their homeland primarily because of the asphyxiating dowry system. Patriarchal structures had ensured that this was not just a cultural practice but a legally binding one as well. Within the bleakness of the post-war period in the early 1950s, these young Greek women who were subjected to the most draconian strictures, were nonetheless given their parents’ blessing to travel to the other ends of the earth on their own to an alien urban environment that could not have been more different to the socio-cultural context that they had just left behind. Some came to marry, sight unseen, a blurred vision of a man in a black and white photograph; most lived with a relative until they married. One thing that conjoined them all was that, irrespective of skill or education, they all ended up engaging in arduous paid employment throughout their life in the Antipodes. And yet, whether in mainstream historical offerings or those produced by the Greek-Australian community itself, there is a paucity of information pertaining to the minutiae of this enormous societal contribution. The primary aim of this presentation is to highlight the propensity of post-war women’s writings to ‘fill in the gaps’ in historical narratives. Extant literary texts illuminate first-generation Greek-Australian immigrant women’s engagement with paid employment in all its diversity and extent. When considering the feminist view that women are ‘hidden from history’, Vertovec and Cohen observe that research in the field of post-war migration and/or diaspora tends to deal with women as a residual category, dependant on their male counterparts. This presentation seeks to render these women independent of their male counterparts, giving them long-overdue visibility in their own right.

Biography

Dr Konstandina Dounis is a cultural historian, author and literary translator. She is currently Consultant Editor for The Cambridge Journal of Literary Translation. Greek-Australian literature, history and culture has been the axis around which her research has revolved. Her doctoral thesis, The Shadow and the Muse, entails extensive forays into unearthing immigrant women’s texts, examining their propensity to challenge historically entrenched perspectives relating to gender-based invisibility. Her awards include the Monash University MSA Award for Teaching Excellence, the AALITRA Award for Literary Translation, the Greek-Australian Cultural League’s Literary Competition Award for Prose and the La Trobe Women’s Network Award for her promotion of immigrant women writers. She has taught extensively within the Faculty of Education at Monash University and has worked within the Monash Education Academy (2020–2025) whose central mandate is the university-wide enhancement of teaching practice. Recent publications include ‘Poetry and Post-War Immigration from Europe’ The Cambridge History of Australian Poetry; and ‘Island and Exile in The House with the Eucalypts’, Koralli Journal of Greek Letters. Her literary translations include Dina Amanatides’ Dreams of Clay, Drops of Dew; Nikos Ninolakis’ On the Ship of Dreams; Ekaterini Mpaloukas’ The Widows and the Dear Departed; Litsa Nikolopoulou-Gogas’ Moments of Truth.