Event Videos — UCLA Promise Institute for Human Rights
DAY 2: Is the Pen Mightier than the Sword? Historians, Disputed Ownership of History, and Ethnic Conflict in the South Caucasus
Examining case studies from Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia to Nagorno Karabakh and its surrounding regions and Nakhijevan in Azerbaijan, scholars present comparative and connective histories of how the historian’s craft and its proponents have been implicated in the incitement of conflict and the destruction of cultural heritage. Topics explored include Soviet nationality policy, the production of national histories for the South Caucasian nationalities, the standardization of curricula of national histories under Soviet and post-Soviet rule, and the destruction of historical monuments
The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province
One cornerstone of the wartime campaign against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was the confiscation of their properties and wealth, which were subsequently transferred to Muslim elites and used in reshaping the domestic economy as well as covering wartime expenses.
UNCOMMON GENEALOGIES: Violence, Belonging and Memory in the Eastern Frontier
Dr. Sengul asks how an analytical focus on (male) gender and methodological orientation in genealogy may help render connective formations and experiences of political violence in these borderlands beyond the limits of historicism and/or methodological nationalism.
PAGING THROUGH PHOTOS AND SONGS: H. Mark and K. Ghazarosian’s Friendship in Post-Genocide Istanbul
Dr. Lerna Ekmekcioglu and Dr. Melissa Bilal, through photographs, letters, and pages of sheet music, follow the story of a friendship between two Armenian women in Istanbul that endured the hardships of WWI, the Armenian Genocide, and early republican Turkey’s repressive minority politics.