A lecture by Dr. Melissa Bilal
Mellon Post Doctoral Fellow
Columbia University
The history accumulated on the Armenian lullaby represents a resource for remembrance, story telling, and the transmission of a sense of loss. Melissa Bilal’s presentation critically analyzes the historical formation of the genre of lullaby in Armenian ethnographic and revolutionary literature and contextualizes it within turn-of-the-twentieth-century gendered politics of land and modernity. Tracing specific examples of songs in printed archival material, sound recordings, and interviews, Bilal points to the continuities and ruptures in the transmission of this repertory within the present day Armenian community of Istanbul. She argues that the Armenian lullaby today takes its political capacity from conveying the affective knowledge to survive the epistemology of denial.
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Gustave von Grunebaum Center for Near East Studies
