Assistant Professor, Alex Manoogian Professor of Modern Armenian History
About
I joined the University of Michigan in 2016 as the Alex Manoogian Professor of Modern Armenian History in the history department, and I'm also an assistant professor in anthropology (by courtesy).
Research Keywords
- Anthropology of history; Silences and absences; indigenous populations; settler colonialism; displacement and migration; storytelling; writing historical ethnographies.
- Post-Ottoman societies (Middle East/Balkans); modern Armenians; Turkey; France; Middle Eastern Christians; Eastern Christianities and Islam.
Research
As a historian of silence and an anthropologist of history, I have been researching and writing the modern Armenian experience, particularly in the shadow of the genocide in Turkey and the diaspora, for the past decade. I am currently working on a book manuscript on the unwritten histories of the Armenian citizens of Turkey that builds on settler colonialism and indegeniety to depict the Armenian experience as it unravelled with nation-state building in Turkey. Based on ethnographic and archival work in France and Turkey, the book critiques the writing of ethnocentric history by positioning the fragmented episodes of Armenian past as part of a global history of indigenous populations that continue to face annihilation, dispossession, destruction, and erasures in the wake of establishing settler and nation-states.
Generally, my research is anchored in critical approaches to the study post-Ottoman histories and societies by brining the historical context of the Balkans in shaping the contemporary Middle East. It seeks to interrogate settler colonial literature to situate state-building projects, the politics of “minorities”/“majorities” in governing population diversity, legally ambiguous populations, and sectarianism in everyday life. In addition to my work on Anatolian Armenians, I am interested in marginal populations such as Christians and Mizrahi/Arab Jews in the Middle East and Muslims in the Balkans and France.
Courses Taught
Lecture courses:
HISTORY / ARMENIAN / MIDEAST 389
*From Natives to Foreigners: Armenians in Turkey and the Diaspora
Armenian history since 1918
HISTORY 232
*Christians of the Middle East: The Armenian Experience
A survey of Armenian history till the genocide
HISTORY / INTLSTD / RELIGION 209
Death, Immortality, and the Afterlive
A deep-historical and anthropological approaches to death
History 202
Doing History
On the craft of "making" history; for history majors.
Seminar/Graduate courses:
HISTORY 430 & 594 / ANTHRCUL 430 & 558 / MIDEAST 480 & 595
*History, Memory, and Silence in the Middle East and North Africa
A historical anthropology course with a focus on the afterlives of the Armenian genocide in the context of post-Ottoman societies from Algeria to Greece.
HISTORY 407 & 594 / INTLSTD 401
Violence and the "Other/s"
Frantz Fanon and the violence of decolonialization (1950s - 1970s) through a contrapuntal reading of the Holocaust and the violence in European colonies.
(Hi)story-Telling with Walter Benjamin
On the writing of historical ethnographies in conversation with Benjamin's "The Storyteller" and "Theses on the Philosophy of History"
(*) Constitute the curriculum in Armenian history. Courses are crosslisted with Middle East Studies and satisfy the requirements for Armenian Studies concentration.
Publications
‘Internal Orientalism and the Nation-State Order: Turkey, Armenians, and the Writing of History’ in ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, Vol. 51, No. 4, 2020.
‘Returning to the Question of Europe: From the Standpoint of the Defeated’ in The Arab and Jewish Questions: Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond. Columbia University Press, 2020.
‘Looking Backwards and Downwards: Walter Benjamin and the Non-European’ An introduction to Echoes of Walter Benjamin: On Tradition, History, and Revolution. Dar Hunna Elles, 2020.
‘Rethinking the “Post-Ottoman”: Anatolian Armenians as an Ethnographic Perspective’ in Anthropology of the Middle East. Soraya Altorki, ed. Blackwell, 2015.
‘Diaspora Activism and the Politics of Locality: The Armenians of France’ in Diaspora and Transnational Studies Companion. Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani, eds. Blackwell, 2013.
‘The Arab/Jewish Counterpoint: An Interview with Daniel Barenboim on the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’ in Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation, 2010.
Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation. University of California Press, 2010 (co-edited with Adel Iskandar).
U-M Affiliations
- Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History
- Center for Armenian Studies
- Center for Middle East and North African Studies
- Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
- Global Islamic Studies Center
- African Studies Center
