07 03 2009 - RUBINA PEROOMIAN TO DISCUSS NEW BOOK IN TALK AT ARARAT-ESKIJIAN MUSEUM

Dr. Rubina Peroomian, author of the recent study And Those Who Continued Living in Turkey Af-ter 1915: The Metamorphosis of the Post-Genocide Armenian Identity as Reflected in Artistic Literature, will give a lecture based on her book on Thursday, April 2, at 8:00 p.m., at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Center, 295 Concord Avenue, Belmont, MA.
And Those Who Continued Living in Turkey After 1915, published by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan, addresses the issues of the psychology of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide who remained in Turkey, their lifestyle after the tragedy, and the struggle to preserve their identity.
In her earlier book Literary Responses to Catastrophe: A Comparison of the Armenian and the Jewish Experience (1993), Peroomian analyzed Armenian and Jewish literary works written in response to the horrors of genocide. The new work focuses on the representation of Armenians who continued living in Turkey after the Armenian Genocide. In the introduction, she writes, “I shift my focus to trace the effects of that past traumatic experience on the formation and metamorphosis of the identity of generations of Armenian survivors who continued living in Turkey.”
Peroomian will discuss the following questions: What happened to the women and the children who were kidnapped during the massacre? What happened to those Armenian families who were forced to adopt Islam? Under what conditions does the modern Armenian community of Istanbul live, and what does it do to preserve its Armenian identity?
The stories that Turkish writers such as Kemal Yalçin have unearthed and the daring memoirs of Turkish citizens such as Fethiye Cetin with an Armenian in their ancestry, as well as obscured references to these same stories and events in Turkish-Armenian literature, have unveiled the full picture of survival, of lost family members, and of forced conversions and the dehumanization and sexual torture of men and women. A multifaceted image of what is broadly generalized as Turkish-Armenian thus emerges.
Dr. Peroomian holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA and has been a lecturer in Armenian language and literature as well as Armenian history at UCLA, University
of Laverne, and Glendale College. She serves as a member of the NAASR Board of Directors for Southern California.
More information on Peroomian’s lecture may be had by calling 617-489-1610, e-mailing hq@naasr.org, writing to NAASR, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA 02478.
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March 6, 2009

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