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Center for Armenian Studies Events

For previous years' guest speakers and topics, please visit the Center for Armenian Studies poster and flyer archive.

We also encourage you to check out a selection of CAS video recordings on our Videos of Past Events page and on our YouTube channel.

CAS Webinar | The Lebanonization of Armenians

Tsolin Nalbantian, Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East History, Leiden University
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
12:00-1:30 PM
Off Campus Location
Please register in advance for the webinar here: http://myumi.ch/51Gxd

After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the webinar.

This talk tells a post-genocide history of power. Dr. Nalbantian discusses how an absence of a national homeland accepted by all Armenians did not translate into a lack of political life. Focusing on the Armenian Diaspora of Lebanon, Dr. Nalbantian shows how by the 1950s, Armenians were firmly part of and ensconced in Lebanese politics. Armenians’ (re)-positioning vis-à-vis Lebanon’s imminent post-colonial independence in the mid-1940s included a fair share of double-entendres, tensions, and contrasts. Lebanese Armenians were divided along the right-left fault lines that divided Lebanese politics and society in general – they, Nalbantian argues, were Lebanonized. At the same time, the Lebanese state was somehow Armenianized, as it started to pay more attention to Armenian matters than before. For example, the state directly intervened with military force in Armenian neighborhoods to end the internecine Armenian confrontation in December 1958. Armenian parties participated in and contributed to the considerable political tensions in Lebanon, simultaneously, they used their position within the Lebanese political system to jostle for power within the Armenian community. Dr. Nalbantian’s talk aims to register Lebanon as a space of both Armenian fashioning and belonging and challenge the tendency to read Middle East history through the lens of dominant (Arab) nationalisms and Lebanon through sectarianism.

Tsolin Nalbantian is Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East History at Leiden University working on the social and cultural history of the Middle East. She is the co-editor of Critical, Connected Histories series (Leiden University Press) and has published articles in Mashriq & Mahjar, MESA Review of Middle East Studies, and History Compass. Nalbantian is the author of "Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon" Their Own (Edinburgh University Press; 2019).

The following text will be included on all II events unless you indicate otherwise:If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
Building: Off Campus Location
Location: Virtual
Event Type: Livestream / Virtual
Tags: Armenia, History
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Center for Armenian Studies, International Institute