The Resilience of Memory: Armenian Genoc

Genocide has indelibly marked the last century. Survivors of these crimes have sought justice and reparations, while also struggling to keep alive the memory of all that was lost. Words and images are employed in this struggle. The literary, performing, and visual arts play key roles in resisting the destruction of memory. Genocide is a crime whose aim is not just the annihilation of biological individuals but of social groups and their cultural heritage. Words (in the form of poetry, memoir, drama, fiction) and images (in the form of photography, film, painting) are used to combat the forgetting, the denial, and the distorting of genocidal crimes.

This course will explore the ways these forms of memory resilience work in the case of the Armenian Genocide. While often under-appreciated, Armenians began a process of reflection upon and resistance against their cultural loss in the decades after 1915. Yet it took another generation for artists and writers to foreground this resistance in their creative output. In parallel to the Jewish response to the Holocaust, the 1960’s and 70’s saw the awakening of a greater Armenian public response to the genocide. Along with memorialization and demands for justice, a heightened critical reflection on the meaning of loss took place. Historical studies of the genocide multiplied adding to our understanding of the nature and causes of the violence. Alongside such scholarship the broader discipline of memory studies has immeasurable added to our understanding of 1915.  

The literature and critical study of the Holocaust and other genocides will help us understand the Armenian resilience of memory. The art and literature we explore will be supplemented by dialogue (in-person or virtually) with writers and artists whose works of resistance continue to be created today.