Gendered silences, gendered memories: new memory work on Islamized Armenians in Turkey

Updated version of an earlier article published in L'Homme: European Journal of Feminist History 24(2), 2013. This chapter argues that the emerging memory literature on Islamized Armenians in Turkey poses several difficult questions regarding the gendered nature of the geno¬cidal process, the gendered embodiment of race/ethnicity/nation, gendered memories of the genocide, the presumed purity or exclusivity of predominant understandings of the nation, the easy equation between nation and religion as well as the prevalent con¬ceptions of who qualifies as a ‘survivor’ of a genocide. A feminist lens, enriched by critical race studies and post-nationalist genocide studies, is key to unravelling these questions.