Kept with Care: Letters from Purgatory

Name: Kept with Care: Letters from Purgatory
Start: 2025-03-28T19:00:00-07:00
Location: Smittcamp Alumni House

Schedule

Fri, 28 Mar, 2025 at 07:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Smittcamp Alumni House | Fresno, CA

This lecture will present the correspondence of Kevork Shamlian of Arabgir to his brother and son who had left for the US to earn money to help those left behind in Arabgir. Bantukhdutyun (becoming migrant laborers) created one of the most difficult situations for Armenian families in the 19th century, which turned out to be even worse at the turn of the 20th century. By then, it was no longer enough to go to Istanbul or other big cities; one had to make the long and risky journey to the USA to earn money to pay taxes. These letters to the United States from Arabgir, now held in Pennsylvania, cover one of the most crucial periods in Armenian history, the period before 1915. They illuminate daily life in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire and signal the approaching tragedy. The catastrophe of 1915 found one of its rarest and most intricate reflections in a letter written in Ottoman script. The collection of letters is an eye-opener on many levels regarding Armenian life in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire just prior to its destruction.
Talin Suciyan is Kazan Visiting Professor of Armenian Studies at Fresno State. She was born and raised in Istanbul. After graduating from the University of Istanbul, she continued her studies in Germany, where she obtained her Ph.D. Based in Munich, she has been teaching and researching at the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Munich over 15 years. She is the author of Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces (Syracuse University Press, 2023) and The Armenians in Modern Turkey: Post-Genocide Society, History and Politics (I. B. Tauris, 2016). Her research focuses on Armenians in the Middle East and Mediterranean.