The Armenian Model (The Epic Narrative of Franz Werfel and Armenian Identity)

"This essay analyses the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel through the lens of rediscovering the Armenian identity, both individually and collectively. Does a people have the right, through its political (and religious) leaders, to decide to exterminate another people? This is the acute problem raised by Franz Werfel’s novel, which is simultaneously a political, sociological, psychohistorical, anthropological and ethical novel."

‘In Russia We are Muslims, In Turkey We are Gyavurs’: Fluid Identities of the Armenian-Speaking Muslim Hemshils

The study examines the process of re/formation of social, ethnic, and religious identities in the Caucasian Black Sea frontier. It resulted in empirical validation of constructivist paradigm. The author tries to elucidate the creative process of ethnic identity formation, which is, according to the presented empirical data, directly linked to socio-economic surrounding of the group. Admittedly, the Hemshils serve as a vivid example of fluidity and flexibility of social identity. The study tries to show how Hemshils’ ethnicity has been shaped by their historical destinies and how they represent it in their everyday life. Living in the borderlands, subsequent bitter experience of deportation, legal disabilities and social deprivation in the receiving societies have predetermined unstable and situational quality of Hemshils’ ethnic identity. The last few decades have been crucial for survival of Hemshils’ communities. New social conditions set the stage for the re-articulation of their ethnic self-identification. Actually, each member of the group may virtually choose between the habitual Turkish option, ‘domestic’ Hemshil or ‘lost’ one, as they have suddenly realized, and some of them regained their Christian-Armenian identity. The versatile dramatic experience tends to foster fluid type of identities redefining and reiterating them repetitively. The aim of the research is the ethnographic description of the discoursive contexts of those unstable changes. The research addresses social scientists and students as well as anybody who cares of how social identity is molded.

Issues of Armenian identity

The monograph is devoted to the analysis of separate episodes in the formation of historical paradigms of Armenian identity, epic manifestations of national identity, peculiarities of Armenian thought and behavior in historical events, attitudes towards national values, views of individual thinkers on the Armenian identity and their projects. The book is intended for those who are interested in the Armenian history, culture and identity issues. (in Armenian)

Cultural Translation and the Rediscovery of Identity

This paper aims to underline how hidden selves rediscover their identity when they are translating or are being translated into the language of their ethnic origin. It compares two specific instances in which translations have been the primary means through which two famous Italian women writers, both of whom received thoroughly Italian formal educations and considered themselves thoroughly Italian, or “thoroughly translated women into Italian” to recall Rushdie, rediscovered their Armenian identity. The authors are the late 19th and early 29th century Italian-Armenian poetess Vittoria Aganoor and the late 20th and early 21st century novelist Antonia Arslan.

Globalization and Armenian Identity. Challenges and Integration (Armenia and Artsakh)

In the present paper an effort is made to analyze the deep roots of the concerns and the past-oriented conservative Armenian attitude towards the spread of globalization. Every aspect of human life is being radically transformed due to global changes. It also helps to spread European and American values, create new values. Among the most significant changes observed as a result of globalization are said to be religious and linguo-cultural identity issues. The study of the mentioned issues is vital in an Armenian context since the people of Armenia and Artsakh, during the past 30 years of independence, have been living in an environment of undeclared war with authoritarian aggressive Azerbaijan.

The Homeland Debate, Redux: The Political–Cultural Impact of the 1946–1949 Repatriation to Soviet Armenia

Chapter 2 deals with the 1946-1949 Soviet repatriation drive to collect all worldwide Armenians and “return” them to the ASSR and, specifically, the Lebanese Armenian political-cultural understandings of it. I explore how that initiative formed a chapter of Lebanese (and other Middle Eastern) Armenians’ renegotiation of national belonging in early post-colonial times. And although about a third of all Armenian repatriates travelled via Beirut, I also look at those who remained in Lebanon and in other countries in the Middle East. The emerging Cold War was more than a backdrop to this story. Heating up, the Cold War – and the very divergent readings of, and responses to, the repatriation initiative among Lebanese Armenians – reinforced tensions between Armenian rightists and leftists. Armenians’ response to repatriation did not simply reflect their extant political-cultural positions. Rather, repatriation sharpened those positions. Responses to repatriation echoed issues on the changing Lebanese/Syrian/Armenian identity complex at the dawn of the post-colonial nation-state. The responses to repatriation included a retelling and a reconstitution of the history of the tragedy of the genocide. They also automatically triggered questions about the location and nature of the Armenian homeland, adding fuel to the division between Dashnaks and Armenian leftists.