Mouradian to Speak at CUNY on Ottoman Syria during Genocide

NEW YORK (A.W.)—Historian Khatchig Mouradian will present an illustrated lecture titled, “Genocide and Humanitarian Resistance in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1917,” at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY) on Fri., Feb. 19 at 6 p.m.

Organized by the Middle Eastern and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC), the lecture will explore the assault on and the humanitarian resistance waged by Armenian deportees in Ottoman Syria during World War I. Mouradian will present a multifaceted account of developments in Aleppo and across the network of concentration camps in Ras ul-Ain and along the banks of the Euphrates River from Meskeneh to Der Zor during the war, drawing on previously untapped primary sources as well as fresh insight from others. The interactions between the local, regional, and central authorities on the one hand, and the humanitarian resistance waged by a network of Armenians aided by locals and Western missionaries on the other, will be the focus of the illustrated presentation. Positioning the war effort at the core of Ottoman policies towards deportees in Ottoman Syria, the speaker will examine how, and why, a series of fateful decisions affecting hundreds of thousands of Armenian deportees—rolled out beginning in fall 1915—culminated in a second wave of massacres in the Syrian desert in summer 1916, and how thousands of Armenians survived the carnage through the efforts of the humanitarian resistance network.

Professor Armen T. Marsoobian will serve as discussant. He is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University. His books include Fragments of a Lost Homeland: Remembering Armenia (I.B. Tauris, 2015).

Mouradian is a visiting assistant professor at the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University and the coordinator of the Armenian Genocide Program at the university’s Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights (CGHR). He teaches courses on imperialism, mass violence, and concentration camps in the history and sociology departments at Rutgers. Mouradian is also adjunct professor in the philosophy and urban studies departments at Worcester State University, where he teaches courses on urban space and conflict in the Middle East, genocide, collective memory, and human rights. Mouradian holds a Ph.D. in history from the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University.

The lecture will be held in Room C 197, the Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 Fifth Ave. at 34^th St. in New York. The event is free and open to the public.