“The Armenian Genocide in Literature”: A Lecture by Dr. Rubina Peroomian

The Armenian Genocide that took place almost a century ago is now sliding into the past, but justice has not been rendered. Obsession with the past fueled by denial of the crime, the deniers’ distortion of history, and the image of a lost homeland that kindles a sense of deprivation are hallmarks of the literature produced in the Armenian Diaspora.  Dr. Rubina Peroomian’s present volume begins with the response of the first-generation writers who survived, complementing her work Literary Responses to Catastrophe(1993) and demonstrating more emphatically the depth of the initial psychological shock of the traumatic experience as well as the soul-consuming struggle in dispersion. It then proceeds to discuss the literary response of the orphan generation, anapati serund, in its diversity and complexity and as a stark departure from the worldviews and literary traditions of the past with, nevertheless, the Genocide at its core.