AGBU Webtalks

Armenian Feminism in Post-Genocide Turkey

Dr. Lerna Ekmekçioğlu shines a light on the history of Armenian feminism in the years following the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey. In the complicated years that followed the existential crisis of 1915, Armenian feminists fought to advance the political, civil, and educational rights of women while also trying to aid and support a national agenda that was essential to the survival of the Armenian community in Turkey.

Dr. Lerna Ekmekçioğlu is the McMillan-Stewart Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies at MIT. Her books include a monograph titled Recovering Armenia: The Limits of Belonging in Post Genocide Turkey (Stanford University Press, 2016) and a co-edited volume titled A Cry for Justice: Five Armenian Feminist Writers from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic (in Turkish, Aras Yayincilik, 2005). Currently she is collaborating with Dr. Melissa Bilal on a book and documentary website project titled “Feminism in Armenian: An Interpretive Anthology and Digital Archive.”

Photo by M. Scott Brauer