This lecture discusses heritage conflicts that concern the memorialization of genocide. It focuses on how migrants and their descendants pursue the official recognition of and the establishment of monuments to remember past genocides. We will talk about what motivates people to engage in the memory of difficult pasts, and the conflicts that this can trigger. The main case that will be discussed in the lecture is the attempts by the Assyrian/Syriac community in Sweden and Australia to raise monuments in honor of the victims of the 1915 genocide (Seyfo), and the response by the Turkish government and those in the Turkish diaspora who deny this genocide. We will look at how this heritage conflict becomes entwined in municipal party politics and legal battles, and how it relates to both foreign policy matters and the integration of immigrant populations.

Questions to think of before the class:

Imagine that you are in charge of decisions regarding public monuments in your home municipality. What would you take into consideration when deciding which historical tragedies (if any) should be awarded a public monument?

How would you design such a monument and where would you place it? Why?

Readings:

Orjuela, Camila (forthcoming), "Diaspora memory conflicts: Struggles over genocide commemoration, recognition and denial", Ethnopolitics. (draft accepted for publication)

Corporaal, Marguérite & Ingrid de Zwarte. 2020. "Heritages of hunger: European famine legacies in current academic debates", International Journal of Heritage Studies, 28:1, 30-43, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2020.1869579