Paper Presentations (each paper followed by discussion):

Aiduosi Amantai, Binghamton University. History.
"Negotiating Power: White Bones and Black Bones in the Kazakh Khanate, 17th–18th Centuries".

Katrina Nousek, Cornell University Department of German Studies
“(Mis)recognition: Ethnicity, Society, and Postsocialist Poetics”

Yulia Antonian, Yerevan State University, Faculty of History, Dept. of Cultural Studies
“Assembling the socialist industrial city: urban environment, social structure and belonging in Charentsavan (Armenia).”

Jeffrey Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and foreign correspondent for The New York Times, has covered major global conflicts and issues throughout his career. A 1994 graduate of Cornell University with a major in philosophy, Jeffrey took a wide range of classes at Cornell, including sculpture, economics, and creative writing. He has reported from some of the world's most challenging locations, including Ukraine, where he recently covered the ongoing war, and from remote areas like Papua New Guinea and the Amazon. With years of experience in conflict zones, including living in Kenya, Jeffrey has also written extensively for outlets such as GQ, National Geographic, and The New York Review of Books. In addition to his work as a journalist, he authored the memoir Love, Africa and frequently appears on national networks like CNN and NPR. Jeffrey also holds a master's degree in anthropology from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. He will discuss his recent experiences reporting on the war in Ukraine, Eastern Europe's challenges with Russia, and the geopolitical competition for dominance in the Arctic. Having recently returned from Greenland, he is open to questions on topics related to Europe, journalism, and any other matters of interest.

The historical trajectories of ethnic cleansing in the 19th and early 20th centuries will be explored in this year’s Annual Armenian Genocide Commemoration lecture, given by Dr. Khatchig Mouradian. The lecture, “Ethnic Cleansing in the Long 19th Century: The Native American, Circassian, and Armenian Cases,” will be held on Thursday, April 24, at 4:30 p.m. in White Hall room 106.

“Cases of ethnic cleansing and genocide are often studied in historical isolation, yet Dr. Mouradian’s talk promises to illuminate how instances of forced displacement across world regions took shape out of related conditions of imperial decline and nation-state formation,” said Lori Khatchadourian, associate professor of Near Eastern studies and anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences. “In comparing the ethnic cleansing of the Ottoman Armenians with the displacement of indigenous Americans and the Circassians of the Russian Empire, this talk by a leading historian of the Armenian genocide will reveal patterns and connections in the systematic removal of ethnic, racial or religious groups, and amplify the traumatic experience of displacement during the long 19th century.

“We are fortunate that Dr. Mouradian is giving this year’s Annual Armenian Genocide Commemoration Lecture at Cornell. It should be of great interest to students and faculty in Near Eastern studies and across the humanities and social sciences.”

Mouradian is a lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies at Columbia University, and the Armenian and Georgian specialist at the Library of Congress. He is also a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.

Mouradian is the author of the award-winning book “The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918” (2021). He is a co-editor of “After the Ottomans: Genocide’s Long Shadow and Armenian Resilience,” (2023) and “The I.B. Tauris Handbook of the Late Ottoman Empire: History and Legacy,” (forthcoming in 2025).

Sponsored by the Department of Near Eastern Studies with support from Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and its Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) initiative, Department of History

Event featuring Naila Kabeer
- Talk: 4-5:30 p.m. (Sage Hall, B09)
- Reception: 6-8 p.m. (Statler)
- Register

About the Speaker:

Naila Kabeer is Professor of Gender and Development at the Department of International Development. Naila is also a Faculty Associate at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute and on the governing board of the Atlantic Fellowship for Social and Economic Equity. She has done extensive advisory work with international agencies (World Bank, ADB, UNDP, UN Women), bilateral agencies (DFID, SIDA, CIDA, IDRC) and NGOs (Oxfam, Action Aid, BRAC, PRADAN and Nijera Kori). Her most recent projects were supported by ERSC-DIFD Funded Research on Poverty Alleviation: Gender and Labour Market dynamics in Bangladesh and West Bengal. She is on the editorial boards of Feminist Economics and Gender and Development and on the international advisory board of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies She is also a member of the Inequalities Advisory Group, Bosch Foundation and a member of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University Institute for Global Health.

Supported By:

Polson Institute for Global Development, EQUAL Lab, Brooks School of Public Policy