The contemporary Rum minority in Turkey—Greek and Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox populations with diverse genealogies—has been shaped by competing Greek and Turkish nationalisms and tensions between imperial legacies and nation-state frameworks. Demographic devastation throughout the twentieth century—including the 1923 population exchange, 1955 anti-Greek demonstrations, and post-1964 expulsions—reduced the community to a small fraction of its former size, with only a few thousand members remaining today.

At the intersection of liberal multiculturalism and state-sponsored neo-Ottomanism, the Rum minority faces gradual museification. Yet Rum liturgies at sites like Panagia Paramythias/Vlach Saray disrupt this process by infusing ruined space with liveness. Far from solely enabling minoritarian futurity, however, by concentrating community vitality around ruins and restoration economies, these performances shape Rum presence through heritage frameworks—what I define as "ruined performativity." This presentation examines how performance at ruins creates paradoxical dynamics that simultaneously sustain and limit minoritarian possibilities.

Bio:

Christina Banalopoulou is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Milan, where she works on the project " Archives of Abjection: Minoritarian Cultural Production in Turkey and Its Diasporas."  She was recently a Matija Murko Fellow in Intellectual History at the University of Ljubljana. Her research examines minoritarian theatre histories in the Eastern Mediterranean and their global diasporas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Critical Research on Religion, Dance Education in Practice, Archival Science, Performance Research, Theatre Research International, Interventions, and Mediterranean Studies, among others. She holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a Focus Group Representative of the Theory and Criticism ATHE Working Group and co-convenes the SWANA Theatre Working Group at ASTR.