{"id":6487,"date":"2019-07-21T15:47:34","date_gmt":"2019-07-21T15:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/?p=6487"},"modified":"2022-11-01T11:35:30","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T11:35:30","slug":"roses-remind-me-of-aleppo-memories-strategies-and-aspirations-of-ethnic-armenian-women-from-syria-in-yerevan-armenia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/?p=6487","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Roses remind me of Aleppo&#8221;: Memories, Strategies, and Aspirations of Ethnic Armenian Women from Syria in Yerevan, Armenia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Speaker:<\/strong>&nbsp; Anahid Matossian, M.S., Ph.D. Candidate,\nDepartment of Anthropology, University of Kentucky<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Date &amp; Time: <\/strong>11:00-13:00, 31 of July, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Location: <\/strong>Eurasia International University, 4<sup>th<\/sup> floor, Room 419, Yerevan, Armenia<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Language: <\/strong>English with\nArmenian consecutive interpretation<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the start of the Syrian\nconflict in March 2011, thousands of Syrians have been displaced all over the\nworld. Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, has become a significant destination\nfor approximately 14,000 Syrian citizens of Armenian descent (categorized as\nrefugees, asylum seekers, and persons in refugee-like situations) who have been\nseeking refuge from armed conflict and protracted cultural, economic, and\npolitical turmoil in Syria. The Armenian state regards itself as a rightful\nhome for ethnic Armenians, and vigorously seeks to attract Armenians from other\nlocations to come \u201chome.\u201d The decisions of ethnic Armenians from Syria to seek\nrefuge and legal status (mostly Armenian citizenship) in Armenia raise\ncompelling questions about the role of the Armenian state in setting parameters\nof cultural and political belonging, and how the state conceptualizes and\ncommunicates an ethno-religious destination of \u201chome.\u201d This is evidenced by the\nmere terminology UNHCR employs to describe the Syrian Armenian population in\nArmenia as being in a \u201crefugee-like\u201d situation, indicating that many Syrian Armenians\ndislike the \u201crefugee label\u201d because it does not accurately describe their\nsituation (since many have acquired Armenian citizenship even before coming to\nArmenia). Syrian Armenian women (SAW) in particular have undergone unique\ntransitions, from largely being housewives in Syria to engaging in charity\nservice and volunteer organizations in Yerevan and establishing small\nbusinesses, ranging from tour agencies to cake baking to selling traditional\nembroidery. Accordingly, my main research question is: in what ways is the\nhome-making of displaced women impacted by impelled migration, settlement,\nchanging gender dynamics, and by a somewhat tenuously shared ethno-religious\nidentity with the host state? Drawing upon 14.5 months of ethnographic\nfieldwork primarily in Yerevan, as well as smaller trips to Berlin and\nIstanbul, this talk will examine how Syrian refuge-seeking women, particularly\nSyrian Armenian women, have grappled with making a \u201chome\u201d in the perceived\nancestral homeland, while maintaining ties to Syrian communities in their\nrespective country of birth and integration in the host state, also viewed as\nan ethnic homeland, Armenia. I argue that gendered dynamics of forced migration\nand resettlement, such as through practices that I call \u201chome-making,\u201d are not\nalways positively impacted by a shared ethno-religious identity with the host\nstate. Furthermore, \u201chome-making\u201d is a complex process not only for Syrian\nArmenian women, but also for NGO and government staff and partners as well as\nmembers of the local population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The speaker, Anahid Matossian, is an Armenian American Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, USA. This past year, she was a recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Student Research Award (2018-2019), spending 9 months in Yerevan with UNHCR as her host institution, and is currently finishing dissertation fieldwork in Yerevan with help from the University of Kentucky Cliggett Award and the Graduate\/Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Funding for this grant opportunity\nis paid in part by private donations. This lecture is sponsored by the American\nResearch Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) and hosted by the Eurasia\nInternational University in Yerevan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>ARISC does not\ndiscriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex,\nphysical or mental disability, medical condition, ancestry, marital status,\nage, sexual orientation, or status as a covered veteran with respect to\nmembership, rights, privileges, programs or activities of ARISC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker:&nbsp; Anahid Matossian, M.S., Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky Date &amp; Time:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armenia-events-2019"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6487"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6489,"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6487\/revisions\/6489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arisc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}