Special event related to WATS will take place at the Bentley Library on September 15, 2011 (4-6 PM).

During the event the editors of the WATS volume “A Question of Genocide,” (Oxford University Press), Professors Muge Gocek and Ronald Suny will discuss the making of the volume and the WATS process in general; there will also be a presentation of the WATS archives.

The Workshop for Armenian/Turkish Scholarship (WATS) has been an ongoing effort on the part of a number of scholars—Armenian, Turkish and other—to investigate the causes, circumstances and consequences of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, overcoming the politics of recognition and denial.  Initiated by a group of faculty and graduate students at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in recent years the organizing committee has consisted of Professors Muge Gocek (Sociology), Gerard Libaridian and Ronald Suny (History) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

With the transfer of the leadership of WATS to a new team by the end of the current year, the organizing committee (Professors Muge Gocek, Gerard Libaridian and Ronald Suny of the U-M) have decided to donate their archives on the genesis and first decade or so of the workshop to the University of Michigan Bentley Library, with the support of the Armenian Studies Program that will ensure the organization and indexing of the available materials, both electronic and hard copy. Once this process is completed, the archives will be made available to researchers at the Bentley Library, most probably by the start of 2012. Professor Francis Blouin, director of the Bentley Library, accepted the offer to house the WATS archives on behalf of the Bentley Library with much enthusiasm and appreciation.

Read more about WATS and ASP Special Projects