The Inaugural Raymond H. Kévorkian Armenian Genocide Commemoration Lecture delivered by Dr. Harry Harootunian.
Harry Harootunian’s The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and its Unaccounted Lives is an attempt to reach an unattainable history by addressing the experience and memories of his parents, who escaped the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916 and migrated to the United States to confront the magnitude of a second challenge of adaptation and economic security in an entirely different environment. Their afterlives in Detroit, where they raised three children, were marked by a void of silence provoked by what they had experienced and the loss they had incurred to configure a daily life continually mediated by the defeating historical effects of genocidal policies Armenians had been subjected to during the closing years of Ottoman rule.
Born in 1929 in the United States, Harry Harootunian is among the leading professional historians of East Asia, focusing on Japan’s early modern and modern history. He is the author of Marx after Marx: History and Time after Capitalism (Columbia University Press, 2015) and Uneven Moments: Reflections on Japan’s Modern History (Columbia University Press, 2019). He was formerly the Max Palevsky Professor, Emeritus of History and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, the dean of Humanities at the University of California, Santa Cruz, editor of Journal for Asian Studies, and co-editor of Critical Inquiry. His newest book is The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and Its Unaccounted Lives.
*Please note that Todd Presner has replaced Michael Rothberg as the Discussant for this event.
Registration is required for this Webinar event.
You can watch a video of this event below: