Panayotis League

Candidate statement

Panayotis League (incumbent) is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Director of the Center for Music of the Americas at Florida State University, where he teaches graduate courses on ethnographic and archival theory and practice; music, dance, and oral poetry in Greece and the Balkans; the construction and performance of race and ethnicity in diasporic contexts; and creative non-fiction writing. He also directs performance ensembles and is an active composer, performer, and recording artist, and in 2019 was named a Master Artist by the Florida Folklife Program for his work preserving and disseminating the traditional music and poetry of the island of Kalymnos. Dr. League has published widely on performance practice among musicians, dancers, and poets throughout Greece and her diaspora, including articles in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, the Journal of Greek Media and Culture, and Ethnomusicology, and his monograph Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-Sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora -- which examines the cultural and memorial politics of musicking among the descendants of Anatolian refugees on Lesvos and in the Boston area -- was published in 2021 by University of Michigan Press. As a longtime member and current Chair of the Transnational Studies Committee, as well as current member of the Executive Board, Dr. League has advocated for a more nuanced and focused engagement with the pressing theoretical and practical issues and challenges confronting scholars of Hellenism living and working in diaspora, and is committed to deepening the MGSA's relationship with sister societies, particularly in the realms of the performing arts and related regional studies.