Description

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From genocide, forced displacement, and emigration, to the gradual establishment of sedentary and rooted global communities, how has the Armenian diaspora formed and maintained a sense of collective identity? This book explores the richness and magnitude of the Armenian experience through the 20th century to examine how Armenian diaspora elites and their institutions emerged in the post-genocide period and used "stateless power" to compose forms of social discipline. Historians, cultural theorists, literary critics, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists explore how national and transnational institutions were built in far-flung sites from Istanbul, Aleppo, Beirut and Jerusalem to Paris, Los Angeles, and the American mid-west. Exploring literary and cultural production as well as the role of religious institutions, the book probes the history and experience of the Armenian diaspora through the long 20th century, from the role of the fin-de-si cle migr Armenian press to the experience of Syrian-Armenian asylum seekers in the 21st century. It shows that a diaspora's statelessness can not only be evidence of its power, but also how this "stateless power" acts as an alternative and complement to the nation-state.

About the Author

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Talar Chahinianholds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA and lectures in the Program for Armenian Studies at UC Irvine, USA, where she is also Visiting Faculty in the Department of Comparative Literature. She has served as assistant editor of the Armenian Review (2010-2017) and is currently co-editor of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. Sossie Kasbarian is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Stirling, UK. She is co-editor of Diaspora- A Journal of Transnational Studies Tsolin Nalbantian is a University Lecturer in Modern Middle East History at Leiden University working on the social and cultural history of the Middle East. Nalbantian is co-series editor of Critical, Connected Histories (Leiden University Press) and has published articles in Mashriq & Mahjar, MESA Review of Middle East Studies, and History Compass. Her book, Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon Their Own, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2020