Lerna Ekmekcioglu

WGS Faculty Director Lerna Ekmekcioglu focuses her research on ethnic and religious minorities and the ways in which minority-ness and gender interplay, with special attention to the dynamic by which minority populations negotiate difference from and sameness with, the majority group. She has a particular interest in the histories of genocide, and in pursuing the links between genocide and post-genocide, especially from a gendered perspective as well as the impact of sexual violence during mass atrocities and “war babies.” Her book project, entitled Surviving the New Turkey: Armenians in Post-Ottoman Istanbul, analyzes the ways in which survivors of the Armenian genocide who continued living inside Turkish borders crafted themselves a new presence to be able to co-habit peacefully with the perpetrator society.  Here she argues that gender played a crucial role in Armenian ways of accommodating the new Turkishness and that an in-depth look at the Armenian feminism of the time reveals the limits of this project.