Turkish and Armenian Lit

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

What kind of place did the Armenian have in the Turkish novel? How do Turkish novelists remember the Armenian past? How did Armenian writers themselves feature and engage with Muslim (particularly Turkish) characters and cultures? How was Islam and Christianity involved in this engagement? The course is a course of intercultural study; it aims to examine the reciprocal representation (or non-representation) of two ethnic groups who co-existed for centuries together in the same (Ottoman) society. Looking at images of Turks in Armenian literature, and images of Armenians in Turkish literature, but in both cases often extending this to the representation Christian (orthodox, catholic, Greek) and Muslim (Kurdish, Arab) Others, to consider exactly how cultures represent one another. Some degree of theory will also be invoked to understand this situation of selective representation better – Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas – and also some degree of Trauma theory in particular (Cathy Caruth), given the background of violence that these literary texts often take place against.