Monday, May 12, 2025 from 6 PM - 8 PM PST / 9 PM - 11 PM EST

In-Person at the UCLA Bunche Hall, Rm 10383, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Please click here to access the presentation via Zoom

FEATURED SPEAKER:

Dr. Anoush Tamar Suni, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Promise Armenian Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. She also earned her PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently working on her first book project, which investigates questions of memory and the material legacies of state violence in the region of Van in southeastern Turkey, with a focus on the historic Armenian and contemporary Kurdish communities. Her research has been published in the journals Comparative Studies in Society and History, Anthropological Quarterly, and The International Journal of Middle East Studies. 

This talk focuses on the overlapping histories of the Armenian and Kurdish communities in the region of Van in southeastern Turkey through an exploration of spaces of material ruination. Landscapes of ruins are testament to the repeating cycles of state violence against these minority communities over the past century. Through the examples of Armenian and Kurdish homes destroyed by genocide and war, a century apart, I demonstrate how spaces of destruction become dynamic sites in which understandings of the past, politics in the present, and possible futures are negotiated, imagined, and enacted.

CO-SPONSORS:

NAASR

Promise Armenian Institute

Center for Near Eastern Studies

Ararat-Eskijian Museum

UCLA Department of Anthropology