Description:

This panel will feature journalist Meline Toumani, author of There Was and There Was Not, and two respondents from the Northwestern faculty: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Associate Professor of Political Science and MENA) and İpek Yosmaoğlu (Associate Professor of History and MENA). Panelists will explore the perspectives of a new generation of commentators on the history and politics surrounding the Armenian genocide and its legacy, the politics of recognition, and the potential of listening to new voices and views as Armenians, Turks, and others navigate life in the present given the events of the past.

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd teaches and writes on the politics of religious diversity, the history and politics of US foreign relations, and the global politics of the Middle East at Northwestern, where she is associate professor of politics and religious studies. She is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton, 2008) and Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (Princeton, 2015), and co-editor of Politics of Religious Freedom (Chicago, 2015) and Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age (Palgrave, 2013).

Meline Toumani has written extensively for The New York Times about international politics as well as about classical music; her stories and essays have also appeared in The Nation, Harper's, n+1, and many other publications. As a reporter she has worked in Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia, and has taught journalism in Southern Russia. Her first book, There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond, was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award.

İpek Yosmaoğlu (Ph.D. Princeton, 2005) is a historian of the late Ottoman Empire. She taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton before joining the history department at Northwestern in 2010. Her research interests include nationalism, violence, political legitimacy and state modernization. In late 2013, she published her first book, Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908 (Cornell University Press), which focuses on the final decades of Ottoman rule in southeastern Europe.