Journal of Modern Greek Studies

The Vanishing Greek Americans: A Crisis of Identity revisits a sociological question that preoccupied Alice Scourby (1926–2009): the place of ethnic identity in high modernity. If identity in the premodern world was given and relatively stable, contemporary identity is in flux. Individuals may distance themselves from previous self-identifications and draw upon available options in their biographies and cultural milieus to fashion alternative, often multiple, identities. For sociologists of ethnicity such as Scourby, this self-becoming makes the cultural ties connecting a group tenuous. A community’s cohesion recedes, and commitment to ethnic institutions attenuates, raising the specter of so-called ethnic devolution and contributing to the cultural demise of the collective. Hence the notion of ethnic identity in crisis.

Turning to this question in the 1980s and 1990s, at a time when scholars were speaking about the “twilight of ethnicity” among European Americans, Scourby situated US Greek ethnicity at the crossroads. She defined Greek Americans as an ethnoreligious group whose institutions produced cohesion and enhanced continuity. Here, Scourby’s main thesis remains unchanged. She asserts that “we continue to see evidence of the enduring function of ethnicity in providing a reference point for a sense of rootedness and belonging” (22). But as early as the 1990s, she expressed concern that prospects for the survival of Greek American culture had begun to “look bleak” (1994, 129). It was this concern that motivated the writing of The Vanishing Greek Americans. Scourby discusses several oft-cited factors contributing to a trajectory of loss: the small number of Greek Americans, assimilation, intermarriage, reduced influx of immigrants, and the movement toward the development of pan-Orthodoxy among Orthodox Christians in the United States. Trends toward secularization and the privatization of identity weaken ethnic ties and pose a challenge to the community’s coherence. Scourby does not lament the community’s [End Page 215] internal diversity, but instead discusses those cultural forces that disempower the group, proposing a comprehensive means of ethnic survival in a rapidly diversifying community. The notion of vanishing expressed in the book’s title works rhetorically to add a sense of urgency to her call for action to reproduce Greek American identity and preserve the collective.

This slim volume consists of six short chapters, a 2008 introduction by the author, and a foreword by historian Alexander Kitroeff. Chapter 1, “The Greek Americans,” identifies the small size of the Greek American demographic—they represent “less than one-half of one percent (0.4)” of the US population—as a source of vulnerability (20). It also discusses Greek Americans in the context of the so-called culture wars of the 1990s, including the Black Athena controversy. Chapter 2, “Greek American Institutions,” identifies ethnic patriarchy as “a community liability” (36) and protests the exclusion of women from leadership positions in major organizations such as the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA). Scourby notes that AHEPA’s governing board does not “include women who are part of the organization’s Auxiliary wing” (38). One of the strongest chapters in the book is Chapter 3, “The Church,” which draws on the scholarship of Eva Katafygiotou-Topping to make a case for the increased participation of women in liturgical life. Chapter 4, “Community Reverberations Pan-Orthodoxy: A Survey,” discusses Greek Orthodox attitudes regarding the unification of ethnic churches “into one single American Orthodox Church” (63), and also includes a discussion of Greek “ethnic vilification” in the US media. Chapter 5, “An Overview of Greece Past/Present,” features portraits of internationally renowned Greek American and Greek diaspora artists such as Dimitri Mitropoulos, Maria Callas, and C. P. Cavafy as examples of modern Greek achievement outside Greece. The book concludes with Chapter 6, “A Compendium,” which explores a wide assortment of Greek American institutional and cultural matters, including the challenges confronting the Hellenic College/Holy Cross School of Theology, the question of cooperation among Greek Americans, support for Modern Greek studies and the arts, and...