Dr. Topalidis will present the historical events surrounding the migration and settlement of Ottoman Greeks in Michigan. The lecture will contextualize these events through the lens of Social Memory Theory and emphasize the erasure of migrant and refugee identity writ large. To achieve this, the lecture will combine macro-level findings from extant scholarship with micro-level novel evidence from the Ottoman Greeks of the United States Digital History Project at Flagler College.

The lecture will cover the following subjects:
• The displacement of Ottoman Greek migrants from their communities during World War I and the Greco-Turkish War.
• Experiences of Ottoman Greek migrants fleeing from the cities of Izmir, Ordu, Şarköy, Semendire, and Ürgüp.
• Experiences of Ottoman Greeks during their settlement in Michigan.
• Experiences of second- and third-generation descendants of Ottoman Greeks during their formative years in Michigan.

Dr. Yiorgo Topalidis received a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Florida in 2022. Yiorgo’s research interests are emigration from the Ottoman Empire to the US and White identity construction, contestation, and transgenerational memory transfer. He is currently working on a monograph that explores the social construction of Ottoman Greek migrant identity in an early-20th-century U.S. context as a case study for decoupling Whiteness from White supremacist Whiteness.