1. The Armenian Genocide: Strategies & Resources for Teachers
Armen T. Marsoobian
Chairperson & Professor of Philosophy
Southern Connecticut State University

2. Who am I?
I am the child of genocide survivors. My mother Alice (neé Dildilian) Marsoobian and my father Michael Marsoobian were children when the genocide began in 1915.
I am a moral philosopher who works in the field of human rights and genocide studies.
I teach courses in comparative genocide studies and the Armenian Genocide both here at Southern and on the graduate level at Columbia University.

3. Why study the Armenian Genocide?
What are the obstacles to teaching the Armenian Genocide?
What are some approaches to teaching the
Armenian Genocide?

4. Why study?
The centrality of the Armenian Genocide to international human rights law and the concept of genocide.
The first formal use of the phrase of “crimes against humanity” was used in reference to the Armenian massacres in 1915.
On May 24, 1915 during World War I, the Allied Powers, Britain, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever a government of committing "a crime against humanity.” With specific reference to the Armenian massacres that began that April, the Allies stated:
“In view of these new crimes of the Ottoman Empire against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.”

5. Raphael Lemkin conceptualizes the crime of genocide.
“Why is the killing of a million a lesser crime than the killing of an individual?” — Raphael Lemkin.
Raphael Lemkin conceptualizes the crime of genocide.
In his autobiography, Lemkin states that he first became obsessed with the relationship of law to the mass murder of civilians when he read about the massacres of the Armenians and the fact that the perpetrators of the crime went unpunished.

6. After the war, some 150 Turkish war criminals were arrested and interned by the British government on the island of Malta. The Armenians sent a delegation to the peace conference at Versailles to demand justice. Then one day I read in the newspapers that all Turkish war criminals were to be released. I was shocked
Talaat Pasha, the minister of the interior of Turkey, who was identified with the destruction of the Armenian people was stopped in the street by a young Armenian with the name Tehlirian. After identifying Talaat Pasha, Tehlirian shot him, saying, “This is for my mother.” Tehlirian’s trial became, in actuality, a trial of the Turkish perpetrators.
The court in Berlin acquitted Tehlirian. It decided that he had acted under “psychological compulsion.” Tehliriian, who upheld the moral order of mankind, was classified as insane . . .
At that moment, my worries about the murder of the innocent became more meaningful to me. I didn’t know all the answers but I felt that a law against this type of racial or religious murder must be adopted by the world.
Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin, Yale U. Press, 2013, pp

7. The origins of the Genocide Convention in the Armenian Genocide
In 1933 Lemkin proposed a new international law to capture what had happened to the Armenians during the genocide of 1915 to In a paper for a League of Nations conference in Madrid he proposed the international prohibition of acts targeting collectivities and the unique harms that such acts engender. Lemkin wrote:
“In particular these are attacks carried out against an individual as a member of a collectivity. The goal of the author [of the crime] is not only to harm an individual, but, also to cause damage to the collectivity to which the later belongs. Offenses of this type bring harm not only to human rights, but also and most especially they undermine the fundamental basis of the social order.”
In analyzing these acts, which he labeled acts of barbarity and acts of vandalism, Lemkin emphasized the social nature of the crime.

8. Obstacles to teaching the Armenian Genocide
Armenia is a small, geo-politically isolated country, one that most students cannot identify on a map.
Armenian Americans are a minority in the United States, numbering between 800,000 and 1.5 million. Southern California and the greater Boston and New York City are the population centers.
The Genocide was an event that began over 100 years ago.
Forgetting and the Turkish denial (Statement of Pope Francis about the dangers of denial) of the Armenian Genocide.
Unlike the Holocaust and more recent genocides, there are few if any survivors alive today.

9. What are the approaches to teaching the Armenian Genocide
Historical approaches either in the context of U.S. history or world history. An under-treated component of World War I.
Literary and artistic approaches that use novels, memoirs, poetry, visual arts and performing arts, and film.
Human rights and social justice approach that places the Genocide within the context of other genocides and social justice issues (e.g., the Holocaust, Dafur, Rwanda, the U.S. Civil Rights movement.)

10. Historical approach U.S. and world history
An example using an individuals story:
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr.

11. Approaching the Genocide through the arts
An example from contemporary cinema, The Promise (2017)
Study Guide
Lesson Plan

12. Human rights and social justice approach with the context of
other genocides.
Edet Belzberg’s Watchers of the Sky (2014).

13. ARSHILE GORKY, THE ARTIST AND HIS MOTHER, C. 1926–36
Resources
ARSHILE GORKY, THE ARTIST AND HIS MOTHER, C. 1926–36

14. The Genocide
Education Project

15. Major Motion Pictures
The major motion picture that was never made: When Franz Werfel’s Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933) was published in English, Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) secured the film rights from Werfel's publisher, Paul Zsolnay Verlag and had the novel translated for the studio scriptwriters.Despite reservations on the part of legal counsel, who felt such a film would offend the Turkish government, MGM started pre-production work in 1934 and tentatively cast a rising young star named Clark Gable to play Gabriel Bagradian. When reports surfaced in the Hollywood press about the film late in 1934, Turkey's ambassador to the United States, Mehmed Münir Ertegün, was ordered by his government to prevent it from being made. The U.S. State Department intervened and the film was never made.
Atom Egoyan’s Ararat (2003).

16. Garin Hovannisian & Alec Mouhibian’s
Fatih Akin’s The Cut (2014).
Garin Hovannisian & Alec Mouhibian’s
1915 The Movie

17. Andrew Goldberg’s The Armenian Genocide (2006)
Documentary Films
Andrew Goldberg’s The Armenian Genocide (2006)

18. Memoir & Testimony The USC Shoah Foundation - Visual History Archive.
Michael J. Arlen, Passage to Ararat (1975/2006).
Peter Balakian, Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past (2009).
Armen T. Marsoobian, Fragments of a Lost Homeland: Remembering Armenia (2015)
Family Testimony: The Dildilians of Marsovan.
20 Voices Project (2005).

20. Fiction Chris Bohjalian, The Sandcastle Girls (2012).
Adam Bagdasarian, Forgotten Fire (2002).
Aline Ohanesian, Orhan’s Inheritance (2015).
Dana Walrath, Like Water Like Stone (2015).

21. Poetry
Siamanto, Bloody News from My Friend: Poems, Peter Balakian & Nevart Yaghlian, trans., Wayne State University Press, ISBN-13:
Vahan Tekeyan, Sacred Wrath: The Selected Poems of Vahan Tekeyan, Diana Der Hoavanessian & Marzbed Margossian, trans., New York: Ashod Press, (selections)
Diana Der Hovanessian & Marzbed Margossian, trans. & ed., Anthology of Armenian Poetry, New York: Columbia University Press, 1978
Eghishe Charents, Land of Fire: Selected Poems, edited & translated by Diana Der Hovanessian & Marzbed Margossian Ardis, 1986.

22. Readable histories that can be used as textbooks:
• Samantha Power, The Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, New York: Basic Books, Covers multiple genocides and the life of Raphael Lemkin who developed the concept of genocide and the prime force behind the U.N. Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 3rd ed, Routledge, Covers multiple genocides including indigenous and colonial genocides.

23. Thank You.
շնորհակալ եմ.