Cultural Studies Seminar: Arlene Avakian

Sabancı University
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

CULTURAL STUDIES SPEAKER SERIES

Festering Wounds: Armenian American Identity, Nationalism, and Genocide Denial

Arlene Avakian

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

15:40  FASS 2034

Reconstituting community in diaspora is always a difficult process, but for groups who have been victims of genocide the rebuilding of community institutions has particular urgency since the very continuity of the people is threatened. When genocide is denied, as is the case for Armenians, the group also has to overcome invisibility. Focusing on Armenian Americans, this talk will address some of the consequences of the almost century of genocide denial with specific attention to gender dynamics within community institutions.

Arlene Avakian is Professor Emerita, founder and former Chair of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  She is author of:  Lion Woman’s Legacy: An Armenian American Memoir (1992); editor of Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meaning of Food and Cooking (1997); co-editor of From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food (2005) and African American Women and the Vote 1837-1965 (1997); as well as numerous articles.