Mediating legacies of empire in the post-imperial museum.

Throughout the Balkans, the history museum remains a crucial site where memories of an imperial past are molded, rationalized, and integrated into the wider arc of nationalist narratives about a country and its people. The legacy of the Ottoman Empire is particularly fraught in Greece, where this period is almost always classified as 'post-Byzantine' within the context of government institutions. In this paper, I set out to trace the legacy of the Ottoman Empire as it has been mediated in multiple museum sites throughout the country. I will primarily focus on two case studies: The National Historical Museum in Athens and the Museum of Ali Pasha and the Period of Revolution in Ioannina. Comparing these two sites and their practices of display bring into sharper focus the dynamics of how historical memory plays out in a central versus regional sphere of belonging and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]