Hrant Dink Memorial Workshop Series: Frameworks of Diversity, Modalities of Interaction

Workshop I
Migrations, Connections, Perspectives: Anatolia and Its Neighboring Regions in the Twentieth Century

We are pleased to announce that a series of workshops under the general title of “Frameworks of Diversity, Modalities of Interaction” are being launched under the auspices of Sabancý University in memory of Hrant Dink.

The twentieth century has witnessed hot and cold wars, resulting in physical and imagined borders that entailed the separation of people, ideas and processes. Despite these facts, however, the twentieth century has also been a time of coexistence, dialogue and exchange. While not trivializing historical and contemporary experiences of conflict and violence, the workshops also seek to explore untold or silenced stories as well as obscured structures of empathy, interaction, and interdependence.

Drawing on Hrant Dink’s legacy of highlighting existing human connections and imagining new ones across presumed or imposed borders, the first of our Hrant Dink Memorial Workshops is entitled “Migrations, Connections, and Perspectives: Anatolia and its Neighboring Regions in the Twentieth Century.”

Suggested paper topics for this year’s workshop include the following:

• Histories of voluntary and forced migrations and population movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• Migrations in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union
• Labor migrations, including seasonal migration, migrant domestics, and the gendering of migration
• Student migrations and “brain-drain”

This workshop will commence on Friday, May 30, 2008, with a public session to be held at the Sabancý Communication Center in Karaköy, Istanbul, and will be followed by panels on Saturday and Sunday at the Sabancý University campus. Panel presentations are not to exceed 20 minutes, so as to leave ample time for discussion. Submissions from all disciplines are welcome, and submissions from advanced graduate students are strongly encouraged. The workshop language is English.

Travel expenses of the panelists coming from countries of the former USSR will be covered by the workshop organization. Sabancý University will provide accommodation for all panelists from abroad.

Please send the provisional title of the paper and an abstract (500 words maximum) by March 21, 2008, to the following address:

Prof. Dr. Fikret Adanýr
Sabancý University
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
34956 Tuzla, Ýstanbul, Turkey
E-mail: adanir@sabanciuniv.edu
Fax: +90 (216) 483 92 50