A two-day international conference, sponsored by the Armenian Studies Program at Fresno State. Organized by Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian and Dr. Ümit Kurt, the conference brings together twelve scholars to discuss this important period in history. The conference will be streamed on Zoom and a link will be available before the conference begins.
Armenian Studies Program
Friday, October 23, 2026
7:00PM-Conference Keynote Address
Smittcamp Alumni House, Fresno State
2625 E. Matoian Way
Keynote Speaker: Nora Barakat (Stanford University)
“Rethinking the Armistice Period: Legal Regimes, Property and the Politics of Reconstruction from Anatolia to Palestine”
Panel 1-Moderator: Ümit Kurt
Merih Erol (Özyegin University, Istanbul)
“Rebuilding Lives after the Ottoman Empire: Post-War Reconstruction of Armenian Communities in Greece”
Hratch Kestenian (Orient-Institut, Beirut)
“After Catastrophe: Armenian Doctors, Medical Unions, and the Postwar Reconfiguration of a Transimperial Profession, 1918-1923”
İsmail Keskin (University of Crete)
“Conversions as a Bureaucratic Shield:
Negotiating the Population Exchange”
Saturday, October 24, 2026
Panel 2-10:00AM-11:20AM
Smittcamp Alumni House, Fresno State, 2625 E. Matoian Way
Moderator: Barlow Der Mugrdechian
Adrien Zakar (University of Toronto)
“Tell Armen-Koçhisar (Kızıltepe) and
the Question of Return, 1918–1925”
Ani Ohanian (Clark University)
“Prolonging Genocide, Formalizing Peace:
Geopolitical Reordering and the Loss of Armenia,
1918–1923”
Kent Schull (Binghamton University)
“From Aintab to Aleppo: Joseph Booth and the Exodus of the Mormon-Armenian Community in the Wake of the
Armenian Genocide and the end of WWI”
Matthieu Rey (Centre de Recherche Historique)
“From a Station to a Station: A Local History
of the Armistice”
Saturday, October 24, 2026
Panel 3-11:30AM-12:50PM
Moderator: David Zakarian
Arda Ekşigil (Independednt Researcher, Istanbul)
“The Business Committee or the Indiscreet Scramble
for Armenian Property in Early Republican Istanbul”
Şahika Karatepe (Binghamton University)
“Afterlives of Dispossession: Armenian Survival and
Structural Violence in Bardizag after 1915”
Diana Hayapetyan (Clark University)
“Theorizing Return in Armenian Genocide Studies”
Ümit Kurt (University of Newcastle; IEA, Nantes, France)
“The Fate of Armenian and Greek Properties in the
Post-First World War Period”