What Happened and Why – The Denial of State Violence

What Happened and Why – The Denial of State Violence –

LOS ANGELES — Fatma Müge Göçek, Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, will be the guest of the USC Institute of Armenian Studies at a lunch-time conversation to be held on Wednesday, November 5, 2014, at 1:15 p.m. at the Ground Zero Coffeehouse, on campus.

Entitled “What Happened and Why – The Denial of State Violence,” Dr. Göçek will speak about the centuries of collective violence against the Armenians, beginning in the Ottoman period and continuing through the republican period, until today. USC Professor of Religious Studies, Dr. Donald Miller, who is also Executive Director of USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, will be guiding the discussion.

Dr. Göçek, a Turkish-born historical sociologist, has focused on the comparative analysis of history, politics and gender in the first and third worlds. She has analyzed the impact of processes such as development, nationalism, religious movements and collective violence on minorities. Her most recent book is an Oxford University Press publication called The Denial of Violence. Her other books include Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East (SUNY Press, 2002), The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era (I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2011), and A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2011 co-edited with Ronald Grigor Suny and Norman Naimark.)

Dr. Donald Miller is a professor of religion and sociology. He has conducted extensive research on religion and social change, religion and community organizing, social ethics, immigrant religious communities in Los Angeles, and the Armenian and Rwandan genocides. He heads the USC Center on Religion and Civic Culture.

Salpi Ghazarian, the director of the USC Institute of Armenian Studies, says, “We invite the community to join us for this program at the USC campus. This is not a lecture. It’s a conversation between two people who have spent many years studying why and how states inflict violence on their own peoples. Dr. Göçek’s research goes on to try to decipher the roots of the denial that has followed, specifically in the case of state violence against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. This is critical to understanding the present and future state of Armenian-Turkish relations.”

The event will be live streamed at: https://capture.usc.edu/Mediasite/Play/44fb6753d1d443f3af777360a8758a4f1d