In postsocialist Armenia, the production of knowledge and the politics of memory are related processes, both profoundly shaped by the Soviet legacy. In this webinar, two anthropologists discuss their work on the formation of Armenian intellectuals and the memory practices through which Armenian society confronts Stalinist repression trauma. What is the role of knowledge-makers in shaping landscapes of memory? How do personal experiences of becoming intelligentsia in Armenia, and experiencing intergenerational trauma as Armenians, shape ethnographic research on these topics?

Speakers:

Yulia Antonyan Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of History, Yerevan State University (since 2008). Her professional interests are in the fields of anthropology of religion, anthropology of social structure, and intellectuals/intelligentsia. She mostly made fieldwork in Armenia and Armenian communities of Georgia, Syria and Lebanon. Dr. Antonyan has published around 45 articles in English, Armenian and Russian, and edited a volume on anthropology of elites in the South Caucasus (2016). You can find her major articles at https://yerevan.academia.edu/YuliaAntonyan․

Gayane Shagoyan is a leading researcher at the Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (IAE NAS RA). She received her PhD in anthropology from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in 2010. The areas of her research interests include daily life, urban studies, and anthropology of memory. She is the author of about 90 publications including Seven Days and Seven Nights: Panorama of the Armenian Wedding (2011, Yerevan: “Gitutyun”, 618 p., in Armenian), co-author of Stalin Era Repressions in Armenia: History, Memory, and Daily Life (Yerevan: “Gitutyun,” 2015, 440 p., in Armenian).

Moderator:

Lori Khatchadourian is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. Her research uses the methods of archaeology and ethnography to study the relations between people, power, and the material world. Dr. Khatchadourian studies the materiality of social life across temporal divides – ancient and modern – with a particular focus on Armenia and the South Caucasus. She is author of Imperial Matter: Ancient Persia and the Archaeology of Empires (2016) and numerous articles on the archaeology of the Caucasus, Anatolia, and Iran. Khatchadourian is currently working on a book about modernity and the Armenian experience, as told through the ruins of genocide, Soviet socialism, and war.

Hosted by CO+POS:

Housed within the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University, Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies (CO+POS) highlights the latest in innovative research about Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Southeast Europe—a region encompassing the Turkic world, the Ottoman Empire, and its successor nation-states.

CO+POS gives scholars, artists, and practitioners a platform for challenging traditional understandings of this part of the world. From novel perspectives on the Ottoman Empire's architectural heritage to critical policy analyses of current events, CO+POS offers fresh approaches to the study of the dynamic region at the center of the Afro-Eurasia continent.