Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. CAS Lecture | A Disease in the Lungs of Anatloia: Politics of Reform and Modernization at the intersection of Armenian, Kurdish, and Kizilbach Questions across Empire and Nation-State (September 14, 2022 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/97964 97964-21795401@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, September 14, 2022 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

This hybrid event will be held in-person on Wednesday, September 14th at 4:00PM in Weiser Hall 555. It will also be available to attend via zoom using the following link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/91902644887 or by entering the Meeting ID: 919 0264 4887.

In their efforts to modernize the state and establish direct rule in territories under their sovereignty, the late imperial Ottoman and early republican Turkish state elites faced a common problem: Dersim. A Kizilbash Kurdish–majority region with a rich and diverse natural environment in Eastern Anatolia, Dersim toward the end of the nineteenth century became a domain where the Kurdish, Armenian, and Alevi (historically known as Kizilbash) questions came together and clashed with the project of Ottoman and Turkish state formation. Subsumed under the banner of the Eastern Question in the literature, these interwoven questions placed foundational limits on the late imperial and early republican state in the realms of ethnicity, religion, and geography, and turned Dersim into a battlefield for Turkish state making. Often used interchangeably with “military operation,” the language of “reforming Dersim” started under the Ottoman administration in the mid-nineteenth century, gained momentum following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and reached its peak with the early republican era. After the Turkish state’s violent transformation of the region in 1937–38, the state elite abandoned the word reform (ıslahat), which indicates that they had achieved what they understood by “reforming Dersim.” The survivors of the Dersim massacres and their descendants, however, remember Dersim 38, a phrase that evokes tragic memories of genocidal operations in the region, as a collective trauma. This lecture provides the conflicting narratives of this “reform process” from the perspective of both the state elite and the inhabitants of Dersim. It proposes that mutual fear and insecurity defined both the state elite’s approach to Dersim and the Dersimis’ reactions to the state, and all three of the Armenian, Kizilbash, and Kurdish questions played a role.

Cevat Dargın specializes in modern Middle Eastern and Eurasian history with a focus on the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century transformations from empires to nation-states and their impact on borderlands and peoples in the peripheries. Interested in the theory of internal colonialism as a means of state making, his research explores continuities across regime changes and revolutions. Cevat earned his PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University in 2021. He is currently working on several publication projects based on his doctoral research on the history of Dersim, an Alevi Kurdish–majority region with a rich and diverse natural environment in Eastern Anatolia, from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 to the Turkish state’s violent transformation of the region in 1937–38.

]]>
Lecture / Discussion Thu, 01 Sep 2022 14:52:56 -0400 2022-09-14T16:00:00-04:00 2022-09-14T17:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion CAS Lecture | A Disease in the Lungs of Anatloia: Politics of Reform and Modernization at the intersection of Armenian, Kurdish, and Kizilbach Questions across Empire and Nation-State
CAS Lecture | The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century (October 6, 2022 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/98237 98237-21795782@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 6, 2022 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

This hybrid event will be held in person on Thursday, October 6th in Weiser Hall 555. It will also be available to attend via zoom using the following link: http://umich.zoom.us/j/98887893758 or by entering the Meeting ID: 988 8789 3758.

In April 1909, two waves of massacres shook the province of Adana, located in the southern Anatolia region of modern-day Turkey, killing more than 20,000 Armenians and 2,000 Muslims. The central Ottoman government failed to prosecute the main culprits, a miscarriage of justice that would have repercussions for years to come. Despite the significance of these events and the extent of violence and destruction, the Adana Massacres are often left out of historical narratives. The Horrors of Adana offers one of the first close examinations of these events, analyzing sociopolitical and economic transformations that culminated in a cataclysm of violence. Bedross Der Matossian provides voice and agency to all involved in the massacres—perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Drawing on primary sources in a dozen languages, he develops an interdisciplinary approach to understand the rumors and emotions, public spheres and humanitarian interventions that together informed this complex event. Ultimately, through consideration of the Adana Massacres in micro-historical detail, this book offers an important macrocosmic understanding of ethnic violence, illuminating how and why ordinary people can become perpetrators.

Bedross Der Matossian is the Vice-Chair, Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History, and Hymen Rosenberg Professor in Judaic studies at the Department of History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Born and raised in East Jerusalem, he is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed his PhD in Middle East History at Columbia University in 2008. He has taught at MIT and the University of Chicago. He is the editor of the series Armenians in the Modern and Early Modern World (I.B.Tauris and Bloomsbury Press). He is the author, editor, and co-editor of multiple books including the award-winning book Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014). He is the president of the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS).

]]>
Lecture / Discussion Tue, 11 Oct 2022 15:57:32 -0400 2022-10-06T16:00:00-04:00 2022-10-06T19:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion CAS Lecture | The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century
CAS Workshop | Modern State and "Internal" Colonialism (November 4, 2022 9:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/100764 100764-21800328@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 4, 2022 9:30am
Location: Michigan Union
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

In parallel to the process of external colonization around the world, modern state makers simultaneously conquered and colonized people and places within their territorial boundaries by rendering them legible through knowledge production and manageable through force, coercion, intimidation, and, at times, reward. Mountains, deserts, and valleys that have sustained ecosystems of livelihood beyond the control of, and often despite, central administrations became the last bastions of coexistence challenging the expansion of modern state. Scholars such as Harold Wolpe, Rivera Cusicanqui, Robert Blauner, Michael Hechter, James Scott, and Uğur Ümit Üngör have applied the theory of internal colonialism to state-making processes in places as far and wide as, respectively, South Africa, Latin America, North/Black America, England, Southeast Asia, and Turkey. Seemingly provincial yet global in scale, such a wide-ranging applicability shows that internal colonialism has been as widespread and crucial as external colonization—i.e., colonialism *par excellence*—in the making of the modern world.

This workshop brings together scholars whose works challenge disciplinary boundaries and existing periodizations and who engage creatively with underrepresented themes and groups in different parts of the world. The main objective is to explore different approaches to intercommunal relations and environmental circumstances *before, during*, and *after *the absorption of nonstate people and places into a centrally administered modern state. By employing approaches outside state-society, center-periphery, and sovereign-subject dichotomies in conversation with one another, we hope to qualify the metanarratives of collective communal violence that treat ethnic and religious communities as hostile and monolithic entities. The workshop hopes to shed light on the role of the modern state in transforming intercommunal relations and in shaping collective memories.

To these ends, the first panel discusses narratives of cohabitation and state evasion in the imperial and post-imperial settings. The second panel discusses the transformation of ecosystems of coexistence outside direct state control and the ways in which such pasts are remembered. The roundtable brings together both sets of panelists to discuss internal colonialism as a conceptual framework in exploring the processes of modern state-making and its role in transforming people and places, both in history and memory.

November 4, 2022 Program

09:30 - 9:45 Tea/Coffee

9:45 -10:00 Opening Remarks and Introductions
Gottfried Hagen, University of Michigan
Hakem Al-Rustom, University of Michigan
Cevat Dargın, University of Michigan

10:00 - 11:15 Keynote Speaker
Ussama Makdisi, University of California, Berkeley
"Coexistence in an Age of Genocide"

11:15 -11:30 Break

11:30 - 1:30 Panel I: Cohabitation, Conflict, and Internal Colonialism
Moderator and commentator: Fatma Müge Göçek, University of Michigan

Panelist 1: Christopher Gratien, University of Virginia
"Ahmet Cevdet's Civilizing Mission in Cilicia"

Panelist 2: Zozan Pehlivan, University of Minnesota
"The Empire of Priorities: Ottoman State Policies in the Age of Scarcity"

Panelist 3: Cevat Dargın, University of Michigan
Title: The Kizilbash Kurds' Dangerous Mission: Smuggling Armenian Genocide "The Kizilbash Kurds' Dangerous Mission: Smuggling Armenian Genocide
Survivors to Safety During World War I"
.
1:30 - 2:30 Lunch

2:30 - 4:30 Panel II: Transcolonial Existences, Violence, and Remembrance
Moderator and Commentator: Kathryn Babayan, University of Michigan

Panelist 1: Robert Sukiasyan, Armenian Collection at the Shoah Foundation
"Digital Map of Deportations of Armenians of Sivas/Sepastia Province during
the Armenian Genocide"

Panelist 2: Hazal Özdemir, Northwestern University
"They Vowed Never to Return: Armenian Transatlantic Mobility and
Denaturalization at the end of the Ottoman Empire"

Panelist 3: Roxana Maria Aras, University of Michigan
"In Search for Futures Lost: Waqf, Parish, and Locality among Rum Orthodox
in Beirut"

4:30 - 4:45 Break

4:45 - 5:30 Roundtable Discussion
Moderator: Juan Cole, University of Michigan

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at vmmourad@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Workshop / Seminar Mon, 28 Nov 2022 09:25:11 -0500 2022-11-04T09:30:00-04:00 2022-11-04T17:30:00-04:00 Michigan Union Center for Armenian Studies Workshop / Seminar CAS Workshop | Modern State and "Internal" Colonialism
CAS Interactive Artist Presentation | Language As a War Veteran (December 7, 2022 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/99432 99432-21798198@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, December 7, 2022 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

This hybrid event will be held in person on December 7th in Weiser Hall 555. It will also be available to attend via zoom using the following link: https://myumi.ch/84bqq or by entering the Meeting ID: 964 0118 8110.

Cosponsored by the U-M Departments of Linguistics and Comparative Literature, as well as the Center for World Performance Studies and the Donia Human Rights Center.

Karén Karslyan’s 2016 book, «Ատերազմա» տպագրային ֆիլմ [Aterazma: Typographic Film], uses the prism of the 2016 4-Day War between Armenia and Azerbaijan to explore this relationship between war and language. Utilizing constrained writing, interactive components, as well as a combination of various media, Aterazma emphasizes the limits war places on language and the ability to think one’s way out of violence, yet offers a path towards dialogue.

4 years on from Aterazma, Armenia and Azerbaijan have seen another war, this one far more deadly and causing significant changes to the geopolitical realities on the ground, to say nothing of the ongoing suffering borne by servicemen and their families.

In this presentation—part-talk and part-reading—Karén will perform his 2016 work, contextualizing and re-evaluating it in the aftermath of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. He will draw on his own experience of the war, written as part of his latest poetry collection «Լեզվի ծայրին» [Lezvi Tsayrin (On the Tip of the Tongue)], as well as anthropological studies of post-war trauma. Karslyan will also engage the audience in an interactive creative writing experiment based on some of the techniques implemented in the book, allowing the audience to create alternative versions of an existing chapter.

About Karén: Karén Karslyan is a poet, novelist, visual artist, and translator. Born and raised in Armenia, he moved to the United States in 2005. He earned a PhD in English from Yerevan State Linguistic University, where his dissertation centered around a comparative intertextual reading of Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Karslyan writes and translates between Armenian, English, and Russian. His literary work often pushes boundaries, and his most recent Armenian-language publications include the play "The Regime is in Panic" (Actual Art, 2019) and Aterazma: Typographic Film (Inknagir, 2016), a commentary on war, interethnic hatred, and the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Both texts employ the technique of constrained writing and combine traditional writing with visual media and performance. Karslyan’s other publications include «Լեզվի ծայրին» [Lezvi Tsayrin (On the Tip of the Tongue)], a recently published poetry collection from Granish press in Armenia (an excerpt of which was recognized as Granish’s best poetry of 2021), as well as Doomed to Spell (Inknagir, 2010), X Frames/Sec (Bnagir, 2003), and his 2015 translation of Kathy Acker’s Lust (Inknagir). His poems have appeared in a number of anthologies in English, Spanish, French, Serbian, Georgian, and Greek translation. Karslyan is the chairman of the Peace Committee of PEN Armenia and was recognized as writer of the year by Armenian Public TV in 2003.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at vmmourad@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Lecture / Discussion Mon, 28 Nov 2022 13:20:34 -0500 2022-12-07T16:00:00-05:00 2022-12-07T19:00:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion CAS Interactive Artist Presentation | Language As a War Veteran
CAS Lecture | Race, Environment, and the Modern Middle East: A Historical Microanalysis (December 12, 2022 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/101971 101971-21803006@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, December 12, 2022 3:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

This hybrid event will be held in person and via zoom on Monday, December 12th at 3:00 PM.

On Campus Location: Weiser Hall 555

Zoom Alternative: https://myumi.ch/5W7Pr

Meeting ID: 912 9148 8313
Passcode: 649856

This talk explores the role that the late imperial Ottoman and early republican Turkish state elites attributed to environmental factors in their racialization of the Kizilbash (Alevi) Kurdish inhabitants of the Dersim region in Eastern Anatolia as being “Muslim sons of Muslims”in 1890s to becoming “Turkish sons of Turks” by 1930s. State elites developed a double-sided racialization process from the late nineteenth century onwards. In their internal writings, they never doubted the Kurdishness of the Dersimis, even after the state actors came to believe that they had successfully Turkified them. Publicly, however, they argued that Dersim Kurds were indeed the purest Turks; that their Kizilbash belief system, which the state elite had until then perceived as deviant and threatening, reflected primordial Turkish shamanism; and that Dersim’s inaccessible geography had preserved ancient Turkish characteristics in Dersim’s Alevis. First appearing in official reports and later spreading to private publications and media, by the 1940s, the “Turkishness” of Dersim Kurds was so established that government officials considered calling them Kurds in public tantamount to a curse. Using the historical developments in Dersim as a case in point, the talk elucidates the racialization of ethnic and religious communities in the Middle East in the course of transition from indirect imperial to centralized nation-state rule during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It sheds light on the historical backgrounds of some of the contemporary dynamics of structural racism in the region.

Cevat Dargın specializes in the modern history of the Middle East, with a focus on the transformation from indirect imperial to centralized nation-state rule through the lenses of environmental history across regimes changes and revolutions from the late eighteenth-century onwards, thereby challenging official narratives and conventional historiographies that treat such historical junctures as radical ruptures with the past. With a background in political science and Middle Eastern studies, Dr. Dargın integrates theoretical approaches from multiple disciplines and applies them to the study of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, and environment through the histories of understudied and marginalized peoples and places in the peripheries and borderlands. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Mountains and the Modern State: An Environmental History of State-Making in the Middle East. The book explores the role of environmental factors in shaping the transition to modernity in state-making in the Middle East through the case of Dersim, a region in Eastern Anatolia with a rich and diverse natural environment and a predominantly Alevi Kurdish population. The project covers the period from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 to the Turkish state’s violent transformation of the region in 1937–38. Dr. Dargın received his PhD from Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies in 2021.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at armenianstudies@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Lecture / Discussion Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:07:35 -0500 2022-12-12T15:00:00-05:00 2022-12-12T16:00:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion Kizilbash Kurds gathered on the mountains of Dersim during the military operations in the region in 1937 via Dersim Oral History Project.
CAS Lecture | Kings of Rome, Rulers of Heaven: Conceptions of Sovereignty and Empire in Syriac and Armenian Historiography (January 11, 2023 4:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/102054 102054-21803399@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, January 11, 2023 4:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

This event will also be offered via Zoom at http://umich.zoom.us/j/96552630099

In their recently edited volume published in 2021, Philip Michael Forness, Alexandra Hasse-Ungeheuer, and Hartmut Leppin collected a wide array of contributions that examine common concepts of good rulership in eastern Christian communities in the global Mediterranean. Taking seriously their invitation to build on the volume’s conclusions and identify productive areas of future research, this lecture will explore concepts of sovereignty and empire in Syriac and Armenian historiography as evidence for the ontology of the Roman state in late antiquity and early Byzantium.
Although Tim Greenwood, Hartmut Leppin, and Philip Michael Forness have treated similar questions about rulership in Syriac and Armenian literature in their contributions in this volume, they have done so separately and without comparison. Wolfe argues that it is in fact through comparison that we discover that, while Syriac terminology for Roman sovereignty was both diachronically and synchronically extremely stable, Armenian terminology was not, reflecting, among other things, the evolution of Roman imperial titulature in Byzantium. This contrast, suggests divergent experiences of empire in Syriac- and Armenian-speaking communities during a period of transformation and change that reshaped the late antique Near East into the early medieval Middle East.

Dr. James (Jimmy) Wolfe is a historian of Roman institutions and the Roman imperial administration in the late antique and early medieval Middle East. His research examines the evolution of the late Roman state in this period of transformations by re-reading evidence from early Christian communities in the eastern Mediterranean using non-traditional frameworks. He studies dialectics of cultural exchange in northern Mesopotamia, experiences of and impact of empire in Armenian- and Syriac-speaking communities, and the replication of Roman imperial discourses in Greek, Syriac, and Armenian historiography. James received his PhD in Greek and Latin from the Department of Classics at The Ohio State University in December 2020. He has held appointments as a Lecturer in the Department of Classics at The Ohio State University and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University.

]]>
Lecture / Discussion Tue, 13 Dec 2022 08:49:07 -0500 2023-01-11T16:30:00-05:00 2023-01-11T18:00:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion Kings of Rome, Rulers of Heaven: Conceptions of Sovereignty and Empire in Syriac and Armenian Historiography
CANCELED - CAS Lecture | Armeno-Turkish: The Space of Language in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (February 8, 2023 5:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/104037 104037-21808301@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, February 8, 2023 5:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

We apologize that we have had to cancel this event. We will repost the event when we are able to reschedule it.

Armenians consistently composed works in Turkish (with Armenian letters), from the thirteenth through the twentieth centuries. Most historians have had a tendency to shy away from using Armeno-Turkish as a means of getting at myriad aspects of both pre-Ottoman Anatolian and Ottoman pasts. In fact, aside from a few unique examples, Armeno-Turkish texts have almost uniquely been used by historians when considering aspects of Armenian history, literature, or identity, rather than as a tool for looking at realities present inside an overarching Turkish language space, or the Ottoman Empire. In reflecting upon the volume of texts composed in Armeno-Turkish from the late medieval through the modern periods, one can’t help but understand that many Armenians—whether monolingual, bilingual or multilingual—were engaged with oral and written Turkish linguistic and literary cultures. And that they participated in the shared space of the Turkish lyric throughout—and before and beyond—the Ottoman Empire.

Rachel Goshgarian is Associate Professor of History at Lafayette College. She is a social historian who is interested in the circulation of ideas, patterns of social organization and the communication of cultural ideals. She works with primary sources composed in Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Armeno-Turkish, and her academic work is also deeply informed by interrogations and interpretations of material culture. Her first monograph, The City in Late Medieval Anatolia: Inter-faith Interactions and Urbanism in the Middle East, is forthcoming with I.B. Tauris in 2022. Goshgarian has also co-edited Architecture and Landscape in Medieval Anatolia, 1100-1500 with Patricia Blessing (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and co-authored Kendi Kendine Ermenice (or, Teach Yourself Armenian) with Şükru Ilıçak (Istanbul: Armenian Patriarchate, 2006). Rachel Goshgarian is a member of the Middle East Studies Association, the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, and is the vice president of the Society for Armenian Studies. She serves as Reviews and Reconsiderations Editor of the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at armenianstudies@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Lecture / Discussion Mon, 06 Feb 2023 12:18:44 -0500 2023-02-08T17:30:00-05:00 2023-02-08T18:30:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion CAS Lecture | Armeno-Turkish: The Space of Language in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Worlds
CAS Workshop | Negotiating “Ambiguous Race”: Hierarchies of Citizenship and Belonging in the Empires of the Ancient Mediterranean (February 23, 2023 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/104751 104751-21810075@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, February 23, 2023 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

If you wish to attend via Zoom, please register at http://umich.zoom.us/j/93701950330

In the second book of the Annals, the Roman historian Tacitus describes the Armenians as an ambigua gens - an “ambiguous race.” According to Tacitus, not only did Armenia defy definition, but its volatile political history between Rome and Persia reflected the inherent ambiguity of the Armenian gens. Neither Roman nor Persian, Greek nor barbarian, Armenia simply did not fit into one of the established hierarchies the Romans used to order their world and to situate their subjects within the existing hierarchies of their empire.

By drawing the experiences of Armenians into dialogue with other minoritized populations in the Roman empire, Sasanian Persia, and other empires of the Mediterranean, this workshop explores how hierarchies of citizenship, race, and belonging functioned as technologies of imperial rule across a variety of case studies. In particular, it seeks to contribute to critical conversations on the study of race in the ancient and late ancient Mediterranean, thereby shedding light on the ways in which imperial subjects fashioned their individual and communal subjectivities both diachronically and synchronically.

How, then, might the “ambiguity” of the Armenian ambigua gens illuminate not only the experiences of empire, but also the ontology of empires themselves in the premodern Mediterranean? How did imperial hierarchies of citizenship and belonging shape daily life at the center and on the periphery? And how did imperial subjects engage with, manipulate, or even reject these imperial hierarchies in order to navigate their place in their local and supra-local imperial contexts? This workshop brings together scholars from multiple academic disciplines to reconsider the dynamics of imperialism and to propose new historical paradigms to decenter, decolonize, and deconstruct the historiography of empires in the premodern Mediterranean.

If you wish to attend via Zoom, please register at http://umich.zoom.us/j/93701950330

February 23nd | Weiser Hall 555

4:00 pm - 6:00 pm Keynote Address
Dr. Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Princeton University
Racialization in the Roman Empire: Dispositions and Affects

February 24rd | Weiser Hall 555

9:00 am - 10:45 am

Panel I: Whence Ambiguity?: Imperial Hierarchies and the Experiences of Empire
Respondent: Aileen Das, University of Michigan

Cliff Ando, University of Chicago
"Rome and the Peoples Without Name"

Jimmy Wolfe, University of Michigan
"An Ambiguous Race: Armenian and Assyrian Identities in Roman and
American Imperialism"

10:45 am - 11:00 am Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Panel II: Racialized Paradigms and Minoritized Populations in the Ancient and Medieval Middle East
Respondent: Katherine Davis, University of Michigan

Jessie DeGrado, University of Michigan
"Ancient Alterity, Modern Racialization: Language, Culture, and the Construction of the Neo-Assyrian Empire"

Kayla Dang, St. Louis University
"The Entangled Eran: Ethnicity, Religion, and Race in Iranian Studies"

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Panel III: Visual Subjects: Art and Identity in Byzantium
Respondent: Bryan Miller, University of Michigan

Paroma Chatterjee, University of Michigan
"Image-Breaking as Otherness in Byzantium: Business as Usual?"

Christina Maranci, Harvard University
"Breaking Down Byzantium with Nerses III Catholicos (c.641 - c.661)"

This workshop is organized by James Wolfe, 2022-23 Manoogian Postdoctoral Fellow (Department of History, U-M) and Michael Pifer (Department of Middle East Studies, U-M)

This event is cosponsored by the U-M Departments of Classical Studies and Middle East Studies and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at armenianstudies@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Conference / Symposium Thu, 23 Feb 2023 11:50:00 -0500 2023-02-23T16:00:00-05:00 2023-02-23T18:00:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Conference / Symposium CAS Workshop | Negotiating “Ambiguous Race”: Hierarchies of Citizenship and Belonging in the Empires of the Ancient Mediterranean
CAS Workshop | Negotiating “Ambiguous Race”: Hierarchies of Citizenship and Belonging in the Empires of the Ancient Mediterranean (February 24, 2023 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/104751 104751-21810076@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 24, 2023 9:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

If you wish to attend via Zoom, please register at http://umich.zoom.us/j/93701950330

In the second book of the Annals, the Roman historian Tacitus describes the Armenians as an ambigua gens - an “ambiguous race.” According to Tacitus, not only did Armenia defy definition, but its volatile political history between Rome and Persia reflected the inherent ambiguity of the Armenian gens. Neither Roman nor Persian, Greek nor barbarian, Armenia simply did not fit into one of the established hierarchies the Romans used to order their world and to situate their subjects within the existing hierarchies of their empire.

By drawing the experiences of Armenians into dialogue with other minoritized populations in the Roman empire, Sasanian Persia, and other empires of the Mediterranean, this workshop explores how hierarchies of citizenship, race, and belonging functioned as technologies of imperial rule across a variety of case studies. In particular, it seeks to contribute to critical conversations on the study of race in the ancient and late ancient Mediterranean, thereby shedding light on the ways in which imperial subjects fashioned their individual and communal subjectivities both diachronically and synchronically.

How, then, might the “ambiguity” of the Armenian ambigua gens illuminate not only the experiences of empire, but also the ontology of empires themselves in the premodern Mediterranean? How did imperial hierarchies of citizenship and belonging shape daily life at the center and on the periphery? And how did imperial subjects engage with, manipulate, or even reject these imperial hierarchies in order to navigate their place in their local and supra-local imperial contexts? This workshop brings together scholars from multiple academic disciplines to reconsider the dynamics of imperialism and to propose new historical paradigms to decenter, decolonize, and deconstruct the historiography of empires in the premodern Mediterranean.

If you wish to attend via Zoom, please register at http://umich.zoom.us/j/93701950330

February 23nd | Weiser Hall 555

4:00 pm - 6:00 pm Keynote Address
Dr. Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Princeton University
Racialization in the Roman Empire: Dispositions and Affects

February 24rd | Weiser Hall 555

9:00 am - 10:45 am

Panel I: Whence Ambiguity?: Imperial Hierarchies and the Experiences of Empire
Respondent: Aileen Das, University of Michigan

Cliff Ando, University of Chicago
"Rome and the Peoples Without Name"

Jimmy Wolfe, University of Michigan
"An Ambiguous Race: Armenian and Assyrian Identities in Roman and
American Imperialism"

10:45 am - 11:00 am Break

11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Panel II: Racialized Paradigms and Minoritized Populations in the Ancient and Medieval Middle East
Respondent: Katherine Davis, University of Michigan

Jessie DeGrado, University of Michigan
"Ancient Alterity, Modern Racialization: Language, Culture, and the Construction of the Neo-Assyrian Empire"

Kayla Dang, St. Louis University
"The Entangled Eran: Ethnicity, Religion, and Race in Iranian Studies"

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Panel III: Visual Subjects: Art and Identity in Byzantium
Respondent: Bryan Miller, University of Michigan

Paroma Chatterjee, University of Michigan
"Image-Breaking as Otherness in Byzantium: Business as Usual?"

Christina Maranci, Harvard University
"Breaking Down Byzantium with Nerses III Catholicos (c.641 - c.661)"

This workshop is organized by James Wolfe, 2022-23 Manoogian Postdoctoral Fellow (Department of History, U-M) and Michael Pifer (Department of Middle East Studies, U-M)

This event is cosponsored by the U-M Departments of Classical Studies and Middle East Studies and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at armenianstudies@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Conference / Symposium Thu, 23 Feb 2023 11:50:00 -0500 2023-02-24T09:00:00-05:00 2023-02-24T15:00:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Conference / Symposium CAS Workshop | Negotiating “Ambiguous Race”: Hierarchies of Citizenship and Belonging in the Empires of the Ancient Mediterranean
CAS 2023 Annual Dr. Berj H. Haidostian Distinguished Lecture | Tradition and innovation in Armenian music: A Lecture/Performance with The Naghash Ensemble (March 8, 2023 6:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/104752 104752-21810077@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, March 8, 2023 6:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

For the 2023 Dr. Berj H. Haidostian Annual Distinguished Lecture, the Center for Armenian Studies is collaborating with the Center for World Performance Studies to bring the fabulous and internationally renowned Naghash Ensemble to Michigan. The Naghash ensemble “combines the earthy spirituality of Armenian folk song, new classical music, and contemporary post-minimalism with the energy of rock and jazz. Three brilliant female vocalists and some of Armenia’s finest instrumentalists on duduk, oud, dhol, and piano play captivating new music based on sacred texts by the medieval Armenian mystic poet and priest, Mkrtich Naghash.” The idea for The Naghash Ensemble when composer and pianist John Hodian heard Hasmik Baghdasaryan singing medieval Armenian spiritual music in an ancient pagan temple outside of Yerevan, Armenia. The unique acoustics of the ancient structure added to the magic of her voice, John Hodian writes, haunting him for days. Determined to capture the moment and extend the magic beyond that performance, Hodian with a sound in mind searched for many years to find the text that would be the foundation of a new musical journey. Comping through the libraries of Yerevan, New York, and Berlin, Hodian came across the work of the medieval Armenian poet Mkrtich Naghash. “The words leaped off the page and into my soul” Hodian writes. This was exactly the text that he was searching for. Hodian began setting the poem of Mkrtich Naghash to music and eventually found the right group of talented musicians to perform what he had envisioned the day he heard Baghdasaryan’s voice floating through the ancient space enchanting the present.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at armenianstudies@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Performance Mon, 13 Feb 2023 10:23:09 -0500 2023-03-08T18:30:00-05:00 2023-03-08T21:30:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Performance The Naghash Ensemble
The Naghash Ensemble of Armenia (March 9, 2023 7:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/102352 102352-21803906@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 9, 2023 7:00pm
Location: East Quadrangle
Organized By: Center for World Performance Studies

Thursday, March 9
7:00 PM
Keene Theater
East Quad
701 E. University Ave.
Free and open to the public

The Center for World Performance Studies presents the Naghash Ensemble in residence March 7-9, 2023, culminating in a public performance at the Keene Theater. The Naghash Ensemble combines the earthy spirituality of Armenian folk song, new classical music, contemporary post-minimalism, and the energy of jazz and rock. Three brilliant female vocalists and some of Armenia’s finest instrumentalists on duduk, oud, dhol, and piano play new music based on sacred texts by the medieval Armenian mystic poet and priest, Mkrtich Naghash.

Written by Armenian-American composer John Hodian, The Naghash Ensemble’s “Songs of Exile” is a meditation on man's relationship to God from the perspective of a monk forced to live in exile for many years. Part folk music, part classical, and deeply moving.

“The sounds of Ancient Armenia reimagined for the 21st century” — Tigran Mansurian

“A moment of grace and meditation”—Rolling Stone

Supported by the Center for World Performance Studies, the Center for Armenian Studies, and the U-M Arts Initiative

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact Center for World Performance Studies, at 734-936-2777, at least one week in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the University to arrange.

]]>
Performance Thu, 16 Feb 2023 13:43:17 -0500 2023-03-09T19:00:00-05:00 2023-03-09T20:30:00-05:00 East Quadrangle Center for World Performance Studies Performance The Naghash Ensemble
CAS Lecture | A Musician's Role in Advocating for the Armenian Community (April 3, 2023 6:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/106609 106609-21814564@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 3, 2023 6:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

Join this Zoom event at https://myumi.ch/73bmQ

The University of Michigan's College of Pharmacy Multicultural Pharmacy Student Association (MPSO), in partnership with the Center for Armenian Studies invites Dr. Samvel Arakelyan to speak about his role as a professional violinist within the Armenian community.

Dr. Arakelyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, and has been playing the violin and piano since childhood. He uses music not only to bring art and culture into this world, but he also uses it as a platform to advocate for the Armenian community. This event is geared towards having a discussion in which we can use our strengths and passions to advocate about things that are the most important to the communities we belong to. Dr. Arakelyan holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts (DMA) obtained from Michigan State University.

The Multicultural Pharmacy Student Organization (MPSO) focuses on advocating for the awareness and appreciation of different cultures, ethnicities, and identities within the diverse College.

This event is organized by Stella Archiyan, MPSO Director of External Affairs and Doctor of Pharmacy Candidate.

Cosponsored by the Multicultural Pharmacy Student Association (MPSO).

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Lecture / Discussion Wed, 29 Mar 2023 09:23:54 -0400 2023-04-03T18:00:00-04:00 2023-04-03T19:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion CAS Lecture | A Musician's Role in Advocating for the Armenian Community
CAS 2023 International Graduate Student Workshop | The Quotidian and the Divine: Early Modern Gendered Economies of Monasticism in the Eastern Christian World (April 6, 2023 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/104753 104753-21810078@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, April 6, 2023 4:00pm
Location: Tisch Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

Over the decades, the Center for Armenian Studies at U-M has fostered a critical dialogue with graduate students around the globe through our annual graduate student workshops. Together with our faculty, graduate students, visiting and post-doctoral fellows we have pushed scholarship in Armenian Studies in new directions through our collective efforts. Our interventions in the study of Armenian history, literature, translation studies, materiality and the visual arts can be gauged by a carefully curated set of initiatives we have undertaken that will have a long-term impact on the field. The Twelfth Annual International Graduate Student Workshop is a great opportunity to bring together a wide range of disciplines that have engaged closely or obliquely with Christian monasticism.

Scholars of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East have highlighted the complexities of cultural and social life in the empire’s provinces, yet monasticism and monastic life as a social institution remain unstudied. Monasteries have been explored as sites of state cooperation and their leaders as agents of the state, but how can a focus on the social and economic life of monasteries critically reassess themes such as piety, community, and empire?

The church was a critical institution for the physical and spiritual livelihood of Armenians and other Eastern Christian communities. Monasticism existed interdependent of the church; monks and nuns sustained the church’s labor as spiritual shepherds of their communities and served as material stewards of the land and holy spaces. Gendered aspects of monastic life, including the protocols of sexual and spiritual discipline that shaped intimacy and religious life (e.g., celibacy), offer rich vantage points through which the social fabric of confessional communities comes into view. The multiple social, sexual, and spiritual hierarchies that configured these spaces and the relationships they created have yet to be examined.

April 6th Keynote Address I
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
1014 Tisch Hall

Albrecht Diem, Syracuse University
*Was the First Medieval Monk a Woman? - Reconsidered*

Zoom Meeting ID:
959 3416 0523
http://umich.zoom.us/j/95934160523

*This workshop, sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Center for Armenian Studies and funded by the Alex Manoogian Foundation, is organized by Kathryn Babayan (Department of History & Middle East Studies, U-M) and Kelly Hannavi, PhD Candidate (Department of History & Women’s Studies, U-M)*.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at armenianstudies@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Workshop / Seminar Mon, 27 Mar 2023 15:55:27 -0400 2023-04-06T16:00:00-04:00 2023-04-06T17:30:00-04:00 Tisch Hall Center for Armenian Studies Workshop / Seminar CAS 2023 International Graduate Student Workshop | The Quotidian and the Divine: Early Modern Gendered Economies of Monasticism in the Eastern Christian World
CAS 2023 International Graduate Student Workshop | The Quotidian and the Divine: Early Modern Gendered Economies of Monasticism in the Eastern Christian World (April 7, 2023 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/106324 106324-21814064@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 7, 2023 9:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

Over the decades, the Center for Armenian Studies at U-M has fostered a critical dialogue with graduate students around the globe through our annual graduate student workshops. Together with our faculty, graduate students, visiting and post-doctoral fellows we have pushed scholarship in Armenian Studies in new directions through our collective efforts. Our interventions in the study of Armenian history, literature, translation studies, materiality and the visual arts can be gauged by a carefully curated set of initiatives we have undertaken that will have a long-term impact on the field. The Twelfth Annual International Graduate Student Workshop is a great opportunity to bring together a wide range of disciplines that have engaged closely or obliquely with Christian monasticism.

Scholars of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East have highlighted the complexities of cultural and social life in the empire’s provinces, yet monasticism and monastic life as a social institution remain unstudied. Monasteries have been explored as sites of state cooperation and their leaders as agents of the state, but how can a focus on the social and economic life of monasteries critically reassess themes such as piety, community, and empire?

The church was a critical institution for the physical and spiritual livelihood of Armenians and other Eastern Christian communities. Monasticism existed interdependent of the church; monks and nuns sustained the church’s labor as spiritual shepherds of their communities and served as material stewards of the land and holy spaces. Gendered aspects of monastic life, including the protocols of sexual and spiritual discipline that shaped intimacy and religious life (e.g., celibacy), offer rich vantage points through which the social fabric of confessional communities comes into view. The multiple social, sexual, and spiritual hierarchies that configured these spaces and the relationships they created have yet to be examined.

Zoom Meeting ID:
959 3416 0523
http://umich.zoom.us/j/95934160523

April 7th Workshop
10:00 am to 4:00 pm
555 Weiser Hall

Session I 10:00 am - 11:30 am
*Early Modern Monastic Piety and Bodily Sensibilities*
Respondent: Megan Holmes, History of Art, University of Michigan

Haley E. Bowen, PhD Candidate, History, University of Michigan
*“In Consideration of Her Infirmities”: The Experience of Impairment in the Early Modern Cloister*

Janice Feng, PhD Candidate, Political Science, University of Michigan
*The Desire to Suffer? Asceticism, Piety, and Indigenous Women’s Self-Making in Seventeenth Century Nouvelle-France*

Break 11:30 am

Session II 11:45 am-1:15 pm
*Monastic Labor: Scribes & Manuscript Production*
Respondent: Evyn Kropf, University of Michigan Library

Vevian Zaki, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Visiting Researcher, Cataloger of Arabic manuscripts Hill Museum & Manuscript Library
*Scribes, Binders, and Owners of Christian Arabic Manuscripts: Nuns and Monks in the Making of Manuscripts*

Lauren Onel, PhD Candidate, Princeton University: *Holy Fools in Armenia: The Lives of Armenia’s Female Ascetic Scribe*

Lunch 1:15 pm -2:30 pm

Session III 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
*Monastic Transformations in Modernity*
Respondent: Gottfried Hagen, Middle East Studies,University of Michigan

Nora Bairamian, PhD Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles
*Nineteenth Century Armenian Monastic Reform and Reimagination*

Kelly Hannavi, PhD Candidate, History/Women's Studies, University of Michigan
*The Miracle of Sex: Spirituality, Sacred Lands, and Gender in 19th c. Ottoman Mardin*

Break 4:00 pm

Keynote Address II
4:15 pm - 5:45 pm
555 Weiser Hall

Febe Armanios, Middlebury College
*Suffering Bodies: Reflections on Women’s Piety and Virtue in Coptic Religious Narratives*

*This workshop, sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Center for Armenian Studies and funded by the Alex Manoogian Foundation, is organized by Kathryn Babayan (Department of History & Middle East Studies, U-M) and Kelly Hannavi, PhD Candidate (Department of History & Women’s Studies, U-M)*.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at armenianstudies@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Workshop / Seminar Mon, 27 Mar 2023 15:58:27 -0400 2023-04-07T09:00:00-04:00 2023-04-07T17:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Workshop / Seminar CAS 2023 International Graduate Student Workshop | The Quotidian and the Divine: Early Modern Gendered Economies of Monasticism in the Eastern Christian World
Shared Memories: The Armenian Experience Through Objects and Stories (April 24, 2023 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/107275 107275-21815821@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 24, 2023 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

In commemoration of the anniversary of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, U-M's Armenian Students Cultural Association (ASCA) in partnership with the Center for Armenian Studies (CAS) and the Multidisciplinary Workshop for Armenian Studies (MWAS) invites you to a community show-and-tell of all things Armenian! All community members are welcome and encouraged to bring an object or tell a story representative of their Armenian identity.

The object or story can speak to:
- The Armenian experience
- The Armenian Genocide
- The Michigan-Armenian experience
- The American-Armenian experience
- A personal, family story

These objects/stories may be archived and digitized in a future forum.

To register for this event please fill out this form:
https://myumi.ch/2mqxR

Middle Eastern Snacks/Refreshments Provided!

Open to the Public

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at armenianstudies@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

]]>
Community Service Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:05:52 -0400 2023-04-24T16:00:00-04:00 2023-04-24T17:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Community Service Shared Memories: The Armenian Experience Through Objects and Stories