Colorado to host int’l conference on impact of Armenian Genocide

October 21, 2015 - 12:45 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - To mark the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) is planning an international conference, “The Impact of the Armenian Genocide,” to take place on Saturday, November 21, 2015, in Denver, Colorado, Massis Post reports.

The SAS is the international association of Armenian Studies scholars and teachers and is holding its 41st Annual Meeting on the same day in Denver. The conference and meeting will be held in conjunction with the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Annual Meeting, which bring hundreds of scholars in a variety of disciplines together annually to present papers and to participate in panels.

The SAS-organized conference on “The Impact of the Armenian Genocide,” will have two panels. In the first panel on “The Impact on Society,” three participants will present papers: Lerna Ekmekcioglu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “When History Became Destiny: Armenians in Post-Genocide Turkey”; Sossie Kasbarian (University of Lancaster, United Kingdom), “The Politics of Memory and Activism: The Armenian Diaspora Facing 2015”; and Hratch Tchilingirian (University of Oxford), “Armenians in Turkey: The Impact of post-Genocide Isolation and (dis)Integration.”

In the second panel on “The Impact on Culture,” the presenters will be: Talar Chahinian (California State University, Long Beach), “Post-1915 Dispersion Literature and the Figure of the Failed Witness”; Myrna Douzjian (UCLA), “The Ethics of Self-Reflexive Filmmaking; Or, Deconstructing the Genocide Documentary” and Ramela Abbamontian (Los Angeles Pierce College), “The Diasporic Witness: Reconstruction of Testimony by Contemporary Los Angeles Artists.”

http://www.tert.am/am/news/2015/10/20/colorado-conference/1821471

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres and deportations, involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, Italy, 45 U.S. states, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Venezuela, Slovakia, Syria, Vatican, as well as the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.