This project investigates the transformations of post-genocide memory and diaspora identity through the case of the Musa Dagh Armenians, a community that survived the 1915 Armenian Genocide through a remarkable 53-day armed self-defense, later immortalized in Franz Werfel’s novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Following the cession of the Sanjak of Alexandretta to Turkey in 1939, this once-cohesive community was fractured across three distinct national contexts: Vakıflı (Turkey), where a small group remained; Anjar (Lebanon), where the majority resettled under the French Mandate; and Musaler (Armenia), founded by those who repatriated to Soviet Armenia in the 1940s. By comparatively analyzing how the memory of the Musa Dagh resistance has been narrated, commemorated, and politicized across these three contrasting post-genocide contexts—minority survival in Turkey, diasporic consolidation in Lebanon, and socialist/post-Soviet nationalization in Armenia—this project contributes an empirically grounded and theoretically distinctive perspective on how state ideologies and historical trauma co-produce divergent memory regimes within one originally cohesive community.
The project addresses a significant gap in memory studies, which has traditionally focused on nation-states as perpetrators of violence. By examining the memory politics of a genocide committed by a collapsing empire, and the subsequent double displacement of the community, this research offers a unique lens on how memory survives and mutates across post-imperial state formations.
The objectives are:
1. To analyze how the collective memory of the 1915 resistance has been preserved, reshaped, or silenced across the three national contexts.
2. To examine the influence of socio-political environments (Ottoman/post-Ottoman, post-mandate, Soviet/post-Soviet) on the identity transformations of these communities.
3. To assess the role of literature and commemorative practices—particularly the reception of Werfel’s novel—in shaping contemporary identity frameworks.
Adopting a multi-sited ethnographic methodology, the research integrates archival research (Ottoman, French Mandate, Soviet Armenian, and community archives), oral history interviews across three generations, and participant observation of commemorative events. The project incorporates a crucial gender dimension by exploring the experiences of the so-called "Arab brides" who married into the Armenian community of Anjar in the 1960s, examining how gendered experiences of intermarriage and migration influence memory practices and intergenerational identity.
 

Head of Project: Khoren Grigoryan
Supervisor: Ljiljana Radonić
Funding: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship, Horizon Europe
Duration: 08/01/2026–07/31/2028