Suchergebnisse

To remember a native village or town, collect written accounts, photos, and maps, and raise funds to publish a book that displayed all of this material, this was the decades-long dream of many who made up the first generation of Armenian exiles. It was in this general environment, starting in the 1920s, that books— houshamadyans—began to appear in succession in various Armenian diasporan communities. This article analyzes the post-genocide ideological environment where most of the houshamadyans were written and published. It examines the contents of this genre of book in detail and shows how the houshamadyans, which in their essence are a depiction of a past life characterized by diversity, adapt themselves to diasporic nationalist environments.

ABSTRACT. This essay focuses on the process of 'rebuilding' the Armenian nation in the newly constituted states of the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq) in the immediate aftermath of World War I. These efforts were centred on the two largest sectors of the population to have survived the Catastrophe, orphans and familyless (or widowed) women. The essay examines the ideology of 'national reconstruction' and some of its internal contradictions. It pays particular attention to both Armenian women who married Muslims during the deportations and the children born of these marriages, as well as to Armenians who turned to prostitution to survive in the complex conditions prevailing in this period. The author makes use of extensive, previously neglected archival material: for example, correspondence by some of the principal actors, reports written during the process of locating and rounding up Armenian orphans, and documents that shed light on life within the walls of orphanages and women's shelters. The author assembled this archival material in Paris, Beirut, Aleppo, and Cairo, after surveying the contents of various archives.

Historical research into the Armenian Genocide has grown tremendously in recent years, but much of it has focused on large-scale questions related to Ottoman policy or the scope of the killing. Consequently, surprisingly little is known about the actual experiences of the genocide's victims. Daily Life in the Abyss illuminates this aspect through the intertwined stories of two Armenian families who endured forced relocation and deprivation in and around modern-day Syria. Through analysis of diaries and other source material, it reconstructs the rhythms of daily life within an often bleak and hostile environment, in the face of a gradually disintegrating social fabric

An attempt to reveal, recover and reconsider the roles, positions, and actions of Ottoman women, this volume reconsiders the negotiations, alliances, and agency of women in asserting themselves in the public domain in late- and post-Ottoman cities. Drawing on diverse theoretical backgrounds and a variety of source materials, from court records to memoirs to interviews, the contributors to the volume reconstruct the lives of these women within the urban sphere. With a fairly wide geographical span, from Aleppo to Sofia, from Jeddah to Istanbul, the chapters offer a wide panorama of the Ottoman urban geography, with a specific concern for gender roles