Dr Vazken Khatchig Davidian on Out of Sight, Out of Mind
In Search of the Missing Armenians of Turkish/Ottoman Art Historiography with a Decolonizing Eye
This event is part of the Silence and Visuality on Armenian Art & History Seminar Series.
The Silence and Visuality Seminars on Armenian Art & History present current research by emerging and established scholars, and conversations with distinguished contemporary artists.
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Dr Vazken Khatchig Davidian on Out of Sight, Out of Mind: In Search of the Missing Armenians of Turkish/Ottoman Art Historiography with a Decolonizing Eye
The presentation thinks about how the application of questions that have arisen from recent calls for the decolonisation of history can be utilised to contribute towards more complex and nuanced understandings of the ex-Ottoman Middle East. With art history already shown as a fertile ground for debates where diverse understandings of what decolonization of history means have been, and are, rigorously tested, this paper calls for the extension of such scrutiny to the art histories and historiographies which reproduce and normalize the values and biases of mainstream Ottoman/Turkish Studies. Focusing on the most extreme case of erasure, the wholesale excision of Ottoman Armenian artists and material culture from the art historiographies of the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, it cites scholarship and its institutions as complicit in the deliberate obfuscation of the art-historical record. The essay argues that applying the decolonizing spotlight onto Ottoman/Turkish historiographies will expose these erasures as never innocent, but deliberate and systematic components of a far-reaching and ideologically-informed attempt at the Turkification of the art historical record.
This series of talks is hosted by the Oxford Network for Armenian Genocide Research and supported by TORCH funding. Please follow booking links to register online if you wish to attend.
Seminars are held three times a term (Weeks 2, 5, 9) and take place at 5pm in Pembroke College in the Eccles Room, unless stated otherwise.
Talks finish by 5.50pm to allow those with other commitments to leave and are then followed by discussion and refreshments.
This series of talks is hosted by the Oxford Network for Armenian Genocide Research and supported by TORCH funding. Please follow booking links to register online if you wish to attend.
Oxford Network for Armenian Genocide Research, TORCH Networks
