Biography Books Articles Contact PSU Greek Studies | BiographyProf. Thomas J. DoulisProfessor (Emeritus) Portland State University Department of English II. Areas of Specialization Modern Greek Fiction Modern Greek History Modern Greek Culture Fiction (see below) Film Noir Fiction and Film Ethnic History: A Surge to the Sea: A Photographic History of the Greeks in Oregon (1977) Out of our Past: The First 75 Years of the Greek Orthodox Community of Oregon, (1983) III. Courses Taught in Modern Greek Studies George Seferis and Modern Greek Poetry (seminar) Nikos Kazantzakis (seminar) Modern Greek Literature in Translation ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IV. Principal Publications Path for our Valor (novel), Simon and Schuster, 1963 The Quarries of Sicily (novel), Crown, 1969 (republished, 2003) "Ilias Venezis: The Failure of Love". NeoHellenika 3 (1978). Disaster and Fiction. University of California Press, 1977. George Theotokas. Twayne Publishers, 1975. "Stratis Tsirkas: Voice from the Cellar". Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora (1975). "Yiannis Beratis: Objectivity is Freedom". Forum for Modern Language Studies (1972). "Eva Vlami and the Imprisonment of the Past". Balkan Studies 10.1 (1969). "Nikos Kasdaglis and the Regimented State," including Shaved Heads, (a novel), by Nikos Kasdaglis, partially published in The Charioteer, No. 21, 1979. "Pavlos Kalligas and Thanos Vlekas: The Lack of Common Sense among the Greeks," in Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Vol. 17, 1999 pp. 85-103. Thanos Vlekas, by a Nineteenth Century Greek Novel by Pavlos Kalligas, Northwestern University Press, 2001. Awarded Elizabeth Constantindes Translation Prize. Hellenic Foundation for Culture Translation Prize, second prize. The Open Hearth, A Novel of Immigration, The First Generation, XLibris (2003). Out of the Ashes, The Emergence of Greek Fiction in the Nineteenth Century, From Katharevousa to Ethography, XLibris (2003). edited: Journeys to Orthodoxy, A Collection of Essays by Converts to Orthodox Christianity, Light and Life, 1986 Toward the Authentic Church, Orthodox Christians Discuss their Conversions: A Collection of Essays, Light and Life, 1996. Comments and Additional Information Two memoirs: "Nana Kallianesi: Patron of Writers in a Time of Turmoil," Hellenic Quarterly, No, 8 Spring (2001) "The Colossus at Zonar's: George Katsimbalis in Decline," Mondo Greco, Nos. 6/7, Fall 2001/Spring 2002 Currently at work on 1. The Iron Storm, literary culture during the Greek Junta years 2. City of Brotherly Love, the Second Generation (sequel to The Open Hearth) Thomas Doulis was born in Western Pennsylvania and grew up in a steel town that is the locale of most of the action in The Open Hearth: The First Generation, a novel whose narrative spans the years 1914-1937. The second novel in the series, tentatively called City of Brotherly Love: The Second Generation takes as its subject the America of the years 1946-1968. While serving in the Army, he went to Jump School to become a paratrooper and to write the field manual on Unconventional Warfare for the Special Forces. This experience served him in good stead in the writing of Path for our Valor, his first novel (Simon and Schuster, 1963), which was published during the newspaper strike and resulted in few reviews, and those hurried. Library Journal found that the "knowledgeable, tense scenes of parachuting" in Path for our Valor were excellent and that despite the "background of action, the meat of the story" was introspective, "the wonderings of the main characters about questions of responsibility, free will, courage, death, and love." Virginia Kirkus chose Path for our Valor as the "best book of March 1963". Francis Ludlow, editor of The Book Buyer's Guide, identified Path for our Valor as the "Editor's Choice of the Month" because it was a "compelling revelation of a way of life and death far from most of us and, for that reason and others, especially worth reading." The Washington Post believed that "despite its somber undertones, this is a book to be tasted with relish." The Army Times stated that "no novelist has ever described airborne training as realistically". Before going to Greece on a Fulbright, Doulis wrote The Quarries of Sicily (1969), which Best Sellers considered "an excellent novel that tells an interesting story of interesting people, that comments on several aspects of contemporary life, including man's ability to face the unknown world." The Library Journal found that "Doulis writes with passion and maturity, and his characters are finely done, humanly flawed, and understandable," while The Virginia Quarterly Review considered the novel "an intelligently presented, pleasantly literate narrative." Though its foreground action involved an elderly Greek poet and novelist who had been on constant trouble with the government, especially the military dictatorship that oppressed Greece from 1967-1974, it can be considered a Vietnam War novel, since a sub-plot prefigures the catastrophic involvement of the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War and is meant, by the poet-novelist, as a warning to America for its Southeast Asian adventure. The Kansas Missouri Star stated that "few recent novelists have managed to manipulate successfully as complex a story as Doulis does or to suggest so convincingly change within a wide range of persons. This terse work can be read in a short time, but it gives one things to think about for a long time -- like the assertion that 'a democracy must walk carefully and not abandon itself to genius'." Last revised June 5. 2004 |