Thursday, April 16, 2015

Remembering the Armenian Genocide - 100 Years

This month marks 100 years since the beginning of the Ottoman Empire's near elimination of its Armenian population through killing, starvation, and deportation -- an atrocity that continued through 1923 and is often considered the world's first modern genocide.  

After joining World War I's Central Powers in 1914, the Empire's nationalist Young Turks government perceived its Armenian population as internal enemies who might align with Allied Power Russia.  On April 24, 1915 hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople were arrested and later deported or killed.  April 24th is now observed by many to be the official commemoration and start date of the eight-year genocide in which it is estimated that as many as 1.5 million Armenians perished.  

The websites below provide more detailed histories of this genocide and answer frequent questions about it, such as the meaning and origin of "genocide" and the controversy surrounding the use of the word.  Also listed below are many histories of this atrocity and several novels based on it.  Each title links to our catalog, where you can read more about the title and find its location in our collection. Books from that list are on display in the library's rotunda through the end of the month.


Websites

Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota

"The G-Word: The Armenian Massacre and the Politics of Genocide" by Thomas de Waal from Foreign Affairs, January/February 2015 issue.

Q & A: The Armenian Genocide Dispute from BBC News, April 13, 2015

Questions and Answers about the Armenian Genocide by Rick Gladstone from The New York Times website, April 13, 2015

Remembering the Armenian Genocide by Raffi Khatchadourian from The New Yorker website, April 21, 2015.

Nonfiction

Armenian Golgotha by Grigoris Palakʻean.  Knopf, 2009.
Caravans to Oblivion : the Armenian Genocide, 1915  by G. S. Graber.  Wiley & Sons, 1996.

The Fall of the Ottomans: the Great War in the Middle East by Eugene Rogan.  Basic Books, 2015. Chapter Seven: "The Annihilation of the Armenians"
Family of Shadows : a Century of Murder, Memory, and the Armenian American Dream  by Garin K. Hovannisian.  HarperCollins, 2010.

Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide by Thomas De Waal.  Oxford Univ. Press, 2015.
The Holocaust and Other Genocides : History, Representation, Ethics  edited by Helmut Walser Smith.  Vanderbilt University Press, 2002.  Chapter 10: "The Armenian Genocide"
The Knock at the Door : a Journey through the Darkness of the Armenian Genocide  by Margaret Ajemian Ahnert.  Beaufort Books, 2007.
World War I, the "Great War" [DVD]  by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius.  Great Courses, 2006.  Lecture Twenty-Four:  "Armenian Massacres - Tipping into Genocide"

Adult Fiction

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak.  Viking, 2007.

The Gendarme by Mark Mustian.  G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2010.

The Sandcastle Girls: a Novel  by Chris Bohjalian.  Doubleday, 2012.

Young Adult Fiction

Dance of the Banished by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.  Pajama Press, 2014.

Daughter of War: A Novel by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.  Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2008.

The Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian.  DK, 2000.










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