From April 8-10, 2010, a groundbreaking workshop will take place at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Professor Taner Akçam, the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marion Mugar Chair in Modern Armenian History and Genocide Studies at Clark University, will host “The State of the Art of Armenian Genocide Research: Historiography, Sources and Future Directions.” Prof. Eric Weitz, the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair at the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) are co-sponsors.
As is common with scholarship on mass murder, the first researchers and scholars to document the Armenian Genocide were survivors of it. They gathered documentation, compiled memoirs, and published these materials in a systematic way, initially primarily in Armenian. Following hundreds of publications on the subject in many languages and decades later, the study of the Armenian Genocide has transitioned to academically trained specialists. It can now be said that the Armenian Genocide, widely known as the “forgotten genocide,” has rightfully taken an important place within the area of genocide studies.
Assembling eminent scholars of genocide, the Strassler Center workshop will provide an overview of the state of research and the material available in various archives. The organizers aim to create serious discussion around the main problems and fundamental questions of the field. World events demonstrate that a contested past has the power to influence present-day politics. Cooperation between distinguished scholars will make history a tool for reconciliation rather than an impediment to that end. The workshop, planned to coincide with the annual commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, will make clear that denial is no longer an option.
More information on the workshop “The State of the Art of Armenian Genocide Research: Historiography, Sources, and Future Directions” will be available in the coming months. A public program will take place on April 9, while the remaining sessions will be limited to workshop participants.
Finally someone described the Armenian Genocide being not an option. This fact was supposed to be recognized long long time ago but we waited too long my fellows. Again, it is not too late. Like I said many many times to my Armenian people around me that it is a fact being next to a Non-Christian country and for any other being in place of Armenia or Greece would have the same problem maybe even worse. So lets help this Genocide be respected & RECOGNIZED by USA so our ancestors can be buried in PEACE and Accepted by Turkey as a MASS MURDER.