The panelists will develop, through narratives, interviews, photos and personal histories, a framework for what constitutes new Armenian identities in light of the increasing prevalence of Islamicized Armenians reclaiming their former heritage.

Members of the panel are:

Ishkhan Chiftjian, who teaches at Hamburg University, Germany, will focus on genocide, language and collective identity. He is the editor of two books, Voices from Germany and New Voices from Germany, both in German, which include interviews with and articles by German scholars about the Armenian Genocide.

Rakel Dink is the widow of slain Turkish-Armenian journalist and activist Hrant Dink. She will relate her own experience growing up in a family of the Varto clan that, although never forgetting their Armenian Christian roots, escaped persecution by assimilating into the surrounding Kurdish population.

Elyse Semerdjian, Associate Professor of Islamic World/Middle Eastern History at Whitman College, will expand on the findings of her acclaimed book, “Off the Straight Path”:  Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo (Syracuse University Press, 2008). She will explore the connections between ethno-religious persecution and the subjugation of women and Islamic law in the Ottoman Empire as it relates to her recent work on the collective memory of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey and Syria.

Marc Sinan was born to a Turkish-Armenian mother and a German father. His grandmother, Ani, was “Islamicized” during the Armenian Genocide. Appearing on international concert stages since his youth, Sinan is a much-admired guitarist and composer. He will speak about how his music and that of others relates to the experience of Islamacization during and after the Armenian Genocide.