In the 1920s and 1930s a new form of music became popular among the Greek "underclass." This music, known as rebetiko (also written as "rembetiko"), marked an essential step in the newly "exchanged" Greek population's assertion of its national identity. (More.)

This week in our online class we travel to Greece, which, historically, being home to the powerful yet philosophical Ancient Greeks -- the Spartans, the Athenians, the Macedonians and more -- who paved the way for the Roman Empire, is very much at the heart of what makes Western Europe "Western Europe….” (more.)