Short Abstract:
The panel will highlight several key aspects of genocide such as gender, the role of the military and paramilitary forces, ideologically-driven revisionist state history and genocide denial and how genocide is understood, remembered and represented in the arts.
Long Abstract:
The Armenian Genocide is often described as a prototype for other genocides of the 20th century. The Armenian massacres occurred in the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) during WW I and the immediate post-war years. From a population of just over two million persons, a million and half Armenians perished from forced mass deportations, starvation, disease and massacres. The legal term 'crimes against humanity' emerged in 1915 during the efforts of the world leaders to 'describe the indescribable'. The Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin was profoundly moved by such mass deportations and killings and eventually created the term genocide. Unfortunately, the subsequent decades of the 20th and 21st centuries have witnessed even more state-sponsored mass atrocities that have included war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Often the three sets of criminal acts are intertwined for complex reasons.
This panel raises key questions on how genocide is understood, remembered and represented in the arts (literature, film, paintings, songs and other media). The panel will highlight several key aspects of genocide such as gender, the role of the military and paramilitary forces, ideologically-driven revisionist state history and genocide denial.
The panel notes the interdisciplinary nature of genocide studies and encourages anthropological and ethnographic researchers to utilize their analytical frameworks to study the enormous and multi-dimensional impact of genocide.
Accepted papers:
Session 1
Remembering the Armenian genocide through literature and the arts
Alan Whitehorn
(Royal Military College of Canada)
Paper short abstract:
The mass deportations and killings of the Armenians occurred before the concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide had emerged. Mass atrocities crimes denial can be confronted in a variety of ways that can include academic writings and the arts.
Paper long abstract:
The mass deportations and killings of the Armenians during WW I and in the immediate years after occurred before the emergence of the concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide and when the concept of war crimes was still unfolding. Today, these three terms constitute key conceptual and legal terms in international law for the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and member states. Yet, as in 1915, contemporary times reveals the continued presence of mass atrocities denial, both state-sponsored and by individuals. It remains an important and pressing challenge to confront such denial in a variety of ways. This can include academic historical writings, memoirs, museums, memorials and the arts. Detached analytical accounts are important in fostering understanding on causality, phases and consequences. More engaged personal artistic styles can be profoundly influential in promoting empathy and sympathy towards the victims. Together the two approaches can perhaps help bridge the vast chasm.
Commemorating the Armenian genocide in Turkey: the politics of memory and representation
E. Egemen Ozbek
(Carleton University)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation will document and analyze commemorative events since 2005 which constitute the most recent stage of a longer coming to memory of the Armenian genocide in Turkey. I will critically engage with frames of remembrance used in these events and question their politics of representation.
Paper long abstract:
My presentation will document and analyze a series of commemorative events since 2005 which constitute the most recent stage of a longer coming to memory of the Armenian genocide in Turkey. Despite widespread recognition of the genocide internationally, among leading Turkish intellectuals and public figures, and in the Armenian community, the Turkish government continues to maintain an official policy of denial.
Until very recently it was taboo to openly mark the genocide in Turkey. However, beginning with the Human Rights Association's commemorative initiative in 2005, the landscape of genocide memory has begun to change. April 24 has begun to be memorialized in Turkey as the critical day that marks the CUP government's arrest and deportation to their death in 1915 of leading members of the Armenian community in Istanbul. In 2010, a group calling itself Say Stop to Racism and Nationalism, also began to organize public commemorations of the atrocities against the Ottoman Armenians. The time is apt to reconsider how the genocide is now being discussed and remembered in Turkey.
My presentation will not only document these recent commemorations with some accompanying images, but analyze the factors that made the coming-to-memory possible in Turkey within a shifting political and discursive terrain. I will outline the productive nature of this emerging commemorative culture at the same time as I note its present limits. I will critically engage with frames of remembrance used by the agents of memory in their interventions and question their politics of representation.
Sexual and gender violence during Armenian genocide
Nasim Basiri
(Bucharest University)
Paper short abstract:
the Armenian genocide, a well-planned genocide was the Ottoman government's systematic destruction of defenseless and oppressed Armenians which led to a systematic campaign of genocidal sexual violence and other crimes against humanity that formed this genocide.
Paper long abstract:
Twentieth century has been a century of murders by states and non-states actors, death squads, party paramilitaries but mainly by states. the Armenian genocide, a well-planned genocide was the Ottoman government's systematic destruction of defenseless and oppressed Armenians which led to a systematic campaign of genocidal sexual violence and other crimes against humanity that formed this genocide.
This paper concentrates on a number of gendered patterns of destruction, other gendered crimes in the Armenian genocide and gendered characteristics of Turkish genocidal ideology.
This paper also intends to pay special attention to the memoirs of women to talk about the possibilities of narrativizing the sufferings of women during the Armenian genocide and also locates the way in which gendered violence gets institutionalized in Ottoman legal practices and how it reflected the state developmental policies.
Key Words: the Armenian Genocide, Gender, Violence, Ottoman Empire, Women.