Third International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism (ICRAR) Conference
The history of Armenian genocide and its aftermath cannot be understood without taking gender into account. As research on the history of the Holocaust and other genocides has demonstrated, genocidal violence has different but related effects on men and women, on gender relations and on gender hierarchies. Its processes have imposed new meanings on biological differences, femininity and masculinity, and on sexuality. Post-genocidal periods have witnessed the reconstitution of gender relations and the gendering of memory. Histories and memories of genocide are deeply gendered, both in their content and their silences. In this conference we aim to bring together Holocaust scholars with experts in the emerging field of gender and genocide. 2015 will mark the centenary of the Armenian genocide and, accordingly, we aim to pay particular attention to research that focuses on its specific history and memory.
The International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism; Center for Research on Antisemitism, Berlin; Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism; Sabancı University, Gender and Women’s Studies Forum, Istanbul and Central European University, Department of Gender Studies, Budapest
Speakers include: Arlene Avakian, Massachusetts; Donald Bloxham, Edinburgh; Fatma Müge Göcek, Michigan; Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Berlin
Date: Jun. 4 - 6, 2015
Time: All Day
Venue: The Center for Research on Antisemitism, Berlin Institute of Technology, Germany
Free event open to all: No registration required
PROGRAMME
4.June
17.00Opening Remarks
Stefanie Schüler-Springorum , Berlin
17.00
Key note speech 1
Donald Bloxham, Edinburgh
Genocide, the First World War, and the Wider Context, 1875-1945.
17.30 Key note speech 2
Fatma Müge Göcek, Michigan
Transgenerational Impact of the Armenian Genocide on the Victims and the Perpetrators.
5. June
Chair: Ayse Gül Altinay , Istanbul
10.00-12.00
Women, Children and the Genocidal Process
Nazan Maksudyan, Berlin
Survival Strategies of Armenian Children during Genocide as Agency, Empowerment, and 'Growing up'.
Zeynep Kutluata, Istanbul
‘My Son is Innocent’ Petitions Written by Armenian Women of the Otoman State during WWI.
Yektan Türkyilmaz , Durham
‘Biopolitical Weapons’: War, Exodus and the Ordeal of Women and Children in Van, March-August 1915.
Marta Ansilewska, Berlin
Strong Mothers, Weak Fathers? How Jewish Child Survivors Remember Their Parents' Roles Prior to and after Ghettoization.
12.00-13.30 Lunch
13.30-15.30
Chair: Andrea Petö, Budapest
Sexual Violence and Survival
Elke Hartman, Darmstadt
Gülizar and Her Sisters: Girl Abduction in the Armenian Provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century.
Vahe Tachjiyan , Berlin
Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival, Reintegrating Armenian Woman into Post-Ottoman Cities.
Verena Schneider, Berlin
The negation of Suffering: Forced Sex Labor in Concentration Camp Brothels in Remembrance and Research.
15.30-16.00 Break
16.00-18.00
Chair: Shabo Talay, Berlin Breaking the Silence
Wolf Gruner, Los Angeles
What did Jews and Germans in the Third Reich Know about the Armenian Genocide?
Helin Anahit, London
Gendered Narratives of Trauma and Survival: Overcoming the Patterns
of Cultural Silencing.
Ayse Gül Altinay Istanbul and Arlene Avakian Massachusetts
Bridging Divides: Conversations on the Armenian Genocide through the Prism of Gender, Race and Class.
David Kazanjian, Philadelphia
The Scent of a Single Weathered Threshold’: Flânerie Among the Ruins in
Aikatarini Gegisian’s My Pink City.
18.30 Dinner
6. June
Saturday
Chair: Kristin Platt, Bochum 10.00-12.00
The Past in the Gender: Gender and Memory
Bengi Bezirgan , London
The Remains of the Past: The Genocidal Memory of Armenians in
Turkey.
Alice von Bieberstein, Cambridge
Questioning the Voices: Gender and Contemporary Articulations of Armenianness.
Hülya Adak, Istanbul
Gendered Memories of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Armenian-
American Literature.
Sossie Kasbarian, Lancaster
From Genocide Recognition to Gendered Silences: The Disparities within Armenian Diasporic Discourses on Remembering and Memorialisation in 2015.
12.00-13.30 Lunch
13.30-15.30
Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide
Chair: David Feldman, London
Andrea Petö, Budapest
Armenian Genocide/Holocaust
Lerna Ekmekcioglu, Massachusetts
A Gendered Comparison of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust
Alina Bothe, Berlin
Genocide Online : Memory , Gender and the Digital Archive
15.30 Break
16.00 Key note speech 3
Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Berlin
Gender and the Holocaust
16.30 Key note speech 4
Arlene Avakian, Massachusetts
Gender and Denial of the Armenian Genocide: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis