Cultural Bio

Working at a culturally specific museum provided the opportunity to gain a significant knowledge base about a religious, ethnic, and cultural group that I previously knew little about. Organizing and arranging thousands of objects that had no personal cultural significance, but enormous significance to a specific group got me thinking about the importance of recording, saving, and responding to stories of the past. I began to understand the strong connection that is formed between people and place and people with past, especially in cases of forced diaspora. I started to become interested in ways that the past affects the present: what changes and what stays the same? Which stories are told and which are intentionally or unintentionally destroyed? How can one historical event effect masses of people for multiple generations?

Loss of culture and tradition has happened quite significantly in my family over the past 60 years as we have become more “Americanized”. My dad’s family came from Greece two generations ago and immediately changed their last name upon arrival in order to adapt their identity to their new nation (we went from Michalopoulos to Michaels). Since that time, as people with connections to Europe have died, our family has changed from a immigrant family to a domestic family that speaks a different language and has few of the same traditions that existed two generations ago.