"Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be your
mattress,/
And you shall sleep restful nights" (St. Ephraim the Syrian).


Monday, April 24, 2017

Turkish Denials of Armenian Slaughters

The reviews I have read so far of The Promise, which opened in theatres on Friday, have been rather ambivalent, most of them noting that the movie subsumes treatment of the Armenian Genocide into a love story, and so blunts the force of the film.

Nevertheless, to the extent that it reawakens focus on the genocide, it is to be welcomed. That genocide has been fairly widely studied in the late 20th century. For some of the many books treating the genocide discussed or noted on here, go here.

In addition, see two recent studies, including Mass Media and the Genocide of the Armenians: One Hundred Years of Uncertain Representation, a scholarly collection of articles edited by Stefanie Kappler et al. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 241pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The role of the mass media in genocide is multifaceted with respect to the disclosure and flow of information. This volume investigates questions of responsibility, denial, victimisation and marginalisation through an analysis of the media representations of the Armenian genocide in different national contexts.

In addition, because no historical scholarship is done in a vacuum, and no historical memories are even remembered, let alone analyzed, except in a political context of some sort--which context then, as I have been showing on here the past few years in discussions of, e.g., Vamik Volkan's work and the uses and abuses of the Crusades by ISIS, shapes what is recalled and what forgotten--
this second collection merits some attention, too, for it shows scholars in situ, examining how their own disciplines have treated the genocide--or failed to treat it, as has often happened: The Armenian Genocide Legacy by Alexis Demirdjian (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

About this collection the publisher tells us:

This volume focuses on the impact of the Armenian Genocide on different academic disciplines at the crossroads of the centennial commemorations of the Genocide. Its interdisciplinary nature offers the opportunity to analyze the Genocide from different angles using the lens of several fields of study.

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