Keynote Address

Listening to Armenian Women's Survival Testimony with Traditional and "Embodied Archives" 

How can historians read 'against the archival grain' to locate women's stories of genocide survival?  Elyse Semerdjian will showcase a variety of historical sources ranging from written texts to tattooed symbols that she uses tell the story of Armenian women's genocide experience and survival. Showcasing unique archival documents, Semerdjian will expose the limits of the traditional archive for writing the history of the Armenian Genocide and offer her concept of "embodied archives" as a feminist provocation.

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Professor Elyse Semerdjian is a social historian of the Ottoman Empire whose research focuses on the experiences of women and the empire’s Armenian subjects. She has authored “Off the Straight Path”: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo (Syracuse University Press, 2008) and Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide (Stanford University Press, 2023) winner of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) and the Institute for the Study of Genocide Raphael Lemkin best book prize awards.  

Serving both the Strassler Center and the History Department at Clark University, Semerdjian teaches Armenian history, including the history of the Armenian Genocide, and a mix of courses on gender, the Middle East, and the Ottoman Empire.

We are delighted to have Professor Semerdjianas the GHA keynote speaker!

Please see Professor Semerdjian’s Clark University profile and her personal website for more about her and her work.