lecture with Seema Golestaneh. Rescheduled for November 15.

sponsored by Department of Near Eastern Studies, Iranian Student Association, and NES undergrad lunch series

In their article “Decolonizing Anti-Racism” (2005), Bonita Lawrence and Ena Dua suggest that people of color are complicit in colonization and that anti-racism movements exclude Aboriginal people and perspectives. The theme “Decolonizing Anti-Racism” lays at the intersections of struggles for liberation, yet, at the same time, questions the possibilities of freedom in the context of the ongoing colonization of indigenous peoples and lands.

Bonita Lawrence will discuss her article in this Einaudi Center inequalities and social justice global research priority event.

Questions for exploration include: What are some of the bridges that can be built between Indigenous peoples and people of color in struggles against racism, social exclusion, poverty, racialization, police violence, as well as through shared histories of colonization and dispossession? Is it possible to think of an anti-racist politics that is devoid of anti-colonial politics? In what ways do extant imperial and colonial forces operate differently towards these communities in terms of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2002) in determining who is invited into the realm of social life and who, instead, is confined to social death? This question—who must die so we may live—is central to our discussion on the theme of “decolonizing anti-racism.”

Mohamed Abdou, Global Racial Justice Postdoctoral Fellow in the Einaudi Center, will moderate.

Bonita Lawrence teaches in the Indigenous Studies Program at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is Mi'kmaw, with Acadian and English background as well. Her research and publications have focused primarily on urban and non-status identities, and federally unrecognized Aboriginal communities. She is the author of Fractured Homeland: Federal Recognition and Algonquin Identity in Ontario (UBC Press, 2012) and "Real" Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native People and Indigenous Nationhood (University of Nebraska Press and UBC Press, 2004).

This is a virtual event open to the general public via Zoom. Current members of the Cornell community with NetID are invited to view the Zoom discussion together in Room G-08 Uris Hall.

Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫ' (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó:nǫ' are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York state and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó:nǫ' dispossession, and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó:nǫ' people, past and present, to these lands and waters.

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.