Convenor: Kevork Bardakjian, Near Eastern Studies, U-M. Participants: Murat Cankara, Hakem al-Rustom, Ohannes Kilicdagi, 2012-13 Manoogian Fellows.

Armenians of Istanbul will explore literary representations, as well as social and political realities of life in Istanbul.

Whether as emperors or soldiers, philosophers or architects, there was an Armenian presence in Byzantium, Constantine the Great’s Constantinople. After the fall of the city in 1453, there emerged a larger Armenian community with its religious position evolving into a universal patriarchate for the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. In due course, particularly from the 1700s, this polis, the beloved "Bolis" of the Armenians, assumed the religious, cultural, social, and political leadership of the "Western" Armenians, to the Genocide of 1915. Of the myriad aspects of Armenian experiences, this workshop,will explore the literary representations as well as the social and,political realities of life in Istanbul. One of the papers in this workshop will deal with Armeno-Turkish literature (Turkish texts in the Armenian script); another, with two Armenian novels from the 1950s and ”˜60s; the third paper will reflect on the survivors of the Genocide who ended up in Istanbul; and the fourth will delve into contemporary Armenian realities in Istanbul.