NAASR Hosts Lecture On Rescue of Trafficked Women and Children After Genocide

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BELMONT, Mass. — Prof. Keith David Watenpaugh of the University of California at Davis will give a lecture titled “Finding the Lost: The Rescue of Trafficked Women and Children After the Armenian Genocide” on Thursday, October 28, at 8 p.m., at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Center, 395 Concord Ave.

The lecture will be co-sponsored by the Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA) and NAASR.

Drawn from his forthcoming book, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, Watenpaugh’s talk will examine the League of Nations’ efforts on behalf of deported and vulnerable populations of trafficked Armenian women and children (1920-1927). It presents a case in which the rescuing of trafficked survivors of genocide and civil violence — a seemingly unambiguous good — was at once a constitutive act in drawing the boundaries of the international community, a critical moment in the definition of humanitarianism, and a site of resistance to the colonial presence in the post-Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean; a presence that was often defended in the language of human rights, progress and civilization.

Watenpaugh is a historian and associate professor of modern Islam, human rights and peace who teaches in the Religious Studies Program at UC-Davis. He is the author of Being Modern in the Middle East and has written articles for the American Historical Review, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Social History and Middle East Report.

Admission to the event is free. The lecture will begin promptly at 8 p.m.

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