Columbia University's Heyman Center to Celebrate Release of Mouradian's 'The Resistance Network'

NEW YORK, NY—Heyman Center at Columbia University will be hosting a virtual book celebration event for Dr. Khatchig Mouradian’s newest title The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918. The event will be happening on Tuesday, February 9, 2021 at 6:00 p.m. ET. The event is free and open to the public, but prior registration is required.

The Resistance Network is the history of an underground network of humanitarians, missionaries and diplomats in Ottoman Syria who helped save the lives of thousands during the Armenian Genocide. Mouradian challenges depictions of Armenians as passive victims of violence and subjects of humanitarianism, demonstrating the key role they played in organizing a humanitarian resistance against the destruction of their people. Piecing together hundreds of accounts, official documents and missionary records, Mouradian presents a social history of genocide and resistance in wartime Aleppo and a network of transit and concentration camps stretching from Bab to Ras ul-Ain and Der Zor. He ultimately argues that, despite the violent and systematic mechanisms of control and destruction in the cities, concentration camps and massacre sites in this region, the genocide of the Armenians did not progress unhindered—unarmed resistance proved an important factor in saving countless lives.

This event is sponsored by The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, Office of the Divisional Deans in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, The Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and Columbia University Armenian Center.

About the Speakers:

Elyse Semerdjian is Professor of Islamic World/Middle Eastern History at Whitman College. She authored “Off the Straight Path”: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo (Syracuse University Press, 2008) as well as several articles on gender, non-Muslims, and law in the Ottoman Empire.

Margaret Lavinia Anderson is professor emerita of Modern History at University of California Berkeley. She is the author of Windthorst: A Political Biography, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany, among other publications.

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Professor Dabashi has written 22 books, edited four, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, and comparative literature to world cinema and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics).

Gil Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination; and, most recently, Visual Occupations: Vision and Visibility in a Conflict Zone, among other published works.

About the Author:

Khatchig Mouradian is a lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. Mouradian is the author of articles on genocide, mass violence, and unarmed resistance, and the editor of the peer-reviewed journal The Armenian Review.