ARMENIAN INSTITUTE

LECTURE

SUBVERSIVE TOURISM?
ARMENIAN PILGRIMAGE TO HISTORIC CILICIA

By Dr. Anny Bakalian
City University of New York

Thursday, 28 January 2010 at 7:30

Armenian House, 25 Cheniston Gardens, W8 6TG

(Tube: High Street Kensington)

Admission: £5; £3 for Friends of Armenian Institute

Many Armenians have grandparents and great-grandparents who were born in areas of Historic Armenia in present-day Turkey. Cilicia is the western region of their historic homeland, where a nobleman from Greater Armenia founded the Rubenian dynasty in the 11th century along the Mediterranean. Prince Ruben and others who followed him were staunch allies of Crusaders from Europe. These kingdoms came to be known as Lesser Armenia. The Armenian population was decimated by the pogroms and genocide against Armenians in 1894-96, 1909, and 1915-22. By 1923, the only significant Armenian community in Turkey was in Constantinople.

The names of the villages and towns of their ancestors are vivid in the memories and personal history of the descendants of Genocide survivors. Yet few have ventured to trace their roots there. This presentation documents the pilgrimage in May-June 2009 of 22 Diaspora Armenians to Cilicia and environs.

Dr. Bakalian's presentation documents photographically this experience of "Subversive Tourism"– including many of the reactions the locals had to this group of Armenian tourists returning to the lost lands of their heritage – which for its participants was socially, spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally transformative.

Wine and snacks to follow the lecture.

Dr. Bakalian is Associate Director of Middle East & Middle Eastern American Center at City University of New York. She is the author (with Medhi Bozorgmehr) of recently published book Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond (May 2009) and the critically acclaimed sociological study Armenian Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian (1992).