This lecture will discuss the experiences of Armenian women who were “absorbed” into Turkish, Kurdish, and Arab households during the genocide of 1915, and who then escaped or were rescued after the Armistice and returned to the Armenian community. In the last ten years, scholars have begun to focus on this topic. We now know much more about the forced conversion process, Armenian and international humanitarian relief efforts, and Armenian community responses.

But in order to truly understand the genocidal impact of “absorption,” religious conversion, and erasure of identity, the difficult decisions Armenian women made, and the lingering impacts on individuals and the community during the process of reintegration, we need survivors’ stories. Historians have traditionally been wary of including Armenian survivors’ stories in their work, partly because of Turkish denial. Still, this project seeks to place them front and center and to listen to their silences and words.

In this lecture, Dr. Jinks will explore some such stories, and she would be particularly interested to hear in the Q&A and after from any audience members who are able to share family histories or passed-down stories of “absorption” and reintegration.

Dr. Rebecca Jinks is a historian of comparative genocide and humanitarianism at Royal Holloway, University of London. During her Ph.D., she won the first Raphael Lemkin Scholarship to the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (Yerevan) and began researching international humanitarian responses to “absorbed” Armenian women, especially those who had been tattooed on their faces and bodies according to Bedouin custom.

University Business Center, Alice Peters Auditorium, Fresno State

Free admission and free parking (with parking code) in Lots P6 or P5. Call the Armenian Studies office to get your parking code: 559-278-2669