“And my Mother Gave Me Away”: Armenian Women Survivors’ Stories of “Absorption” and Reintegration During and After Genocide”

This lecture will discuss the experiences of Armenian women who were “absorbed” into Turkish, Kurdish, and Arab households during the genocide of 1915, and who then escaped or were rescued after the Armistice and returned to the Armenian community. In the last 10 years, scholars have begun to focus on this topic, and we now know much more about the forced conversion process, Armenian and international humanitarian relief efforts, and Armenian community responses.

Dr. Rebecca Jinks is a historian of comparative genocide and humanitarianism at Royal Holloway, University of London. During her Ph.D., she won the first Raphael Lemkin Scholarship to the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (Yerevan), and began researching international humanitarian responses to “absorbed” Armenian women, especially those who had been tattooed on their faces and bodies according to Bedouin custom.

Date: Thursday, Sept. 15
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: University Business Center, A. Peters Auditorium

For more information contact Professor Barlow Der Mugrdechian, barlowd@csufresno.edu or call 559.278.2669.