island conversations
podcast series

Can you tell us what you're working on right now in terms of island research? Also, you are an education consultant. You have been the director of the kind of Greek Studies Center at Drexel University; you bring students from around the world who study in the US here to Crete. Tell us a little bit about that and how it connects to you as a scholar, and as an Islander, and why it is meaningful and important to have these educational experiences for younger people.

These days, I'm mainly focusing on study abroad programs. So, I'm using educational methods based on primarily experiential learning. I do use technology a lot. So I'm doing what I'm saying: hybrid teaching. But being an anthropologist, I want students to eyewitness things. So, ideally, I would like them to come and see what I'm talking to them about. Also, because of the extensive use of technology, these days, we tend to forget the real, the actual thing.I think it's very important to keep the connection with that. A very simple metaphor is, you know, I cannot feed you through the cables, you're not going to taste the food, you really, I really have to give it to you. So I focus on that method of teaching. I do use notions, I challenge artificial intelligence for replacing it with tradition and I do have students who work with video games and programs and things that have to do with technology, but by providing them with traditional materials, so we use the Minoan mythology, for example, Greek mythology, history, stories, and we make certain projects. I don't know if you're familiar, for example, with Minecraft, which is an educational game developed by Microsoft, and all children go crazy about that, teenagers too. So we use the metaphor of the labyrinth that we mentioned before, and we build labyrinths, and we challenge students to find their ways out of the labyrinths this way, learning the myth and learning what a labyrinth, for example, is. We have students that play with notions of food, the traditional Mediterranean diet, and how we can today create modern dishes yet healthy, and, you know, sustainable as well. I'm interested in healing practices because community dancing and belonging to a group and dancing in a circle really have benefits. And I believe that's one of the secrets of the people here on Crete, at least traditionally, the idea of feeling that they belong to a community and they, therefore don't feel isolated, as would be the case in other parts of the world. And also, conscious mobility. 

I find people, even though technology has progressed so much, today, are more hesitant about traveling and going to other parts of the world and getting to know. They prefer staying in their room and connecting through a computer and learning things through the internet. And, surprisingly, younger generations do not have this curiosity, so to say. Still, I see in myself a continuation of the Homeric you know,  adventure of the Islander that really wanted to get out of Ithaca and go and explore what it is out there, even though there were so many problems in the way, Cyclops, monsters, you know, storms, Poseidon, you know, you name them. So I think having to encounter those things traveling, as Greek poet Cavafy would say, always teaches you something. You feel you’ve reached the destination, but you're never at the destination; you keep going because you want to keep going. I think it's this sense of nostalgia, the pain that is created within you and want to go back and return, I think it only becomes better if you keep traveling and learning and knowing that any place can be home. As I said, in the very beginning, everything is everywhere the same. People are the same; we all want the same thing. And only if we understand that we express it in different ways, yes, I'm not saying all things are the same; But if we perceive this correctly, then I think we can all live harmoniously and exceed borderlines and use water as a bridge to connect us and not as something to disconnect us.

And also celebrate that, that we all express that sameness in very distinctive, you know, cultural ways.

Maria, at what point this cretin Islander, living in the massive mainland of the USA, decided that you need to return to your Ithaca, and why was that?

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It's because my own research had to do with the island of Crete, so it was very hard. Yes, I was teaching classes that had to do with Greece and Crete in the United States. And that was very beneficial for the majority of my students over there. But I felt that I really needed to show them the authentic, the actual thing. And I saw myself as an ambassador, you could say, a cultural ambassador of my island. And I wanted to do that with by providing people firsthand experiences. I'm not only working with students, but other groups, executive MBAs, for example, that they want to see how smaller businesses and not the massive ones that they have in the States work on the island of Crete; I work with people on, that they want to see why the diet on the island of Crete is healthier, and why feeding yourself with olive oil and things that are, you know, slowly, processed, and produced and cooked in extense are more beneficial. And whether, of course, something like that can be reintroduced to urban societies, with herbal practitioners, that people that they want to use herbs, and herbal remedies, with musicians. I wanted to be with Cretans but work with people who are not from Crete because I felt I needed to show them my culture, and having been in the States for approximately 20 years gave me I believe the benefit of being this outsider and gained several things from being outside from his home and being objective while presenting home to the others, having a more objective and not, you know, the stereotypical idea, we are the best without having seen what else exists out there. And also being able to draw parallels because, for example, Native American culture is big in the United States and Native Americans are like, you know, the Minoans or, you know, people from Crete used to be in the past, they had, for example, of rain dances where they would dance, they would perform to call for rain because they need it for land. Similarly, the people elsewhere in Greece, but also on the island of Crete, have specific types of performances, because there, and even today, more than ever, those extended periods of times where there is drought, and there is no rainfall, and we need water.

So, being exposed to a country like the United States, where you could see so many cultures, all in one, I would treat those cultures as a salad bowl and not as a soup. So I would try and see what are the characteristic elements of the Germans, of the Japanese, of the Koreans, of the Vietnamese, the Indian, and so on. And what are the parallels? For example, I would have a student who would work on Indian weddings, and I would see that Cretan weddings and Indian weddings religiously might not be the same, but yet, they had similarities in the extensive hours of performing dances, the abundance of food, the rituals that had to do with the bride and the groom, and everybody else. So it was very interesting for me to be able and be exposed to all these other parts of the world by just being, you know, in one part of the world.