Female Fatherlands Women of Letters, Greek Patriotism and the 1821 Revolution

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Published: Dec 29, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.24698
Keywords:
patriotism nationalism female scholars Greek Revolution
Elisavet Papalexopoulou
European University Institute; Researcher; Department of History and Civilization
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5031-5287
Abstract

This article examines the patriotic discourses of a few female thinkers who were connected with the Greek cause, before and during the Greek Revolution. It examines how they understood Greece and Europe as social, political, geographical and revolutionary spaces and how they understood the gendered character of the war. It seeks to challenge traditional localities of the Greek Revolution by including women who lived in areas that were not encompassed by the Greek nation-state after its inception and did not necessarily use the Greek language in their writings.

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Author Biography
Elisavet Papalexopoulou, European University Institute; Researcher; Department of History and Civilization

Elisavet Papalexopoulou is a PhD candidate at the European University Institute in Florence and a recipient of a Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) scholarship. Her dissertation, supervised by Professor Emerita Ann Thomson, is titled “Intellectual activists in an age of revolutions: women’s ideas and political practices in the Greek cultural space (1800–1832)”. Before her PhD, she studied English language and literature at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens and completed her MA at the UCL Institute of Education. Her current research focuses on Intellectual History at the Age of Revolutions, with an emphasis on gender.

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