Post-Genocide Memory and Diaspora Identity of Musa Dagh Armenians in Turkey, Lebanon, and Armenia

Objective

This project explores how the collective memory of the 1915 Musa Dagh resistance—an exceptional episode of armed self-defense during the Armenian Genocide—has been shaped, transformed, or obscured across three post-imperial national contexts: Vakıflı (Turkey), Anjar (Lebanon), and Musaler (Armenia). Once part of a cohesive community in the late Ottoman Empire, the Musa Dagh Armenians experienced multiple forced displacements and became embedded in divergent political systems and memory regimes. The research investigates how contrasting ideological environments influence commemorative practices, intergenerational narratives, and symbolic representations of trauma and resistance. Using a comparative, multi-sited ethnographic approach, it will examine archival materials, public rituals, oral histories, and visual culture to uncover how memory is actively constructed and negotiated. Special attention will be paid to gendered dynamics—such as the role of women who married into or out of the Musa Dagh community—and their impact on belonging and remembrance. The project will contribute to theoretical debates in memory studies, diaspora anthropology, and post-genocide identity by highlighting how one historical event is remembered through competing lenses of nationalism, religious tradition, and minority survival. Rather than assuming fixed narratives, it will analyze how communities interpret the past under changing political and cultural pressures. By foregrounding a non-Western case of post-imperial fragmentation, this study challenges nation-state-centered memory frameworks and advances new models for understanding transgenerational memory and symbolic resilience in the aftermath of collective violence.