Call for Submissions
“Imagining Homelands in Modern Turkey”
Special Issue of Études arméniennes contemporaines
EAC # 14/15 (2020/21)

This special issue takes the territory of modern-day Turkey as a starting point to critically evaluate concepts of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ in the 20th and 21st centuries. The definitions of these two words are multi-layered and context-dependent, and as such ontologically unstable. For instance, ‘home’ can vary in scale from a house to a region, and ‘homeland’ can similarly range from an imaginary place to a specific country with clearly-defined boundaries. In spite of a vast literature across disciplines on nationalism, migration, and territory, ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ still remain used uncritically. This volume will examine the two terms in relation to analytical categories such as representation, diaspora, minority, gender, and memory. It will also scrutinize their definition, construction, and imagination in the context of often overlapping spaces which various ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups have throughout the ages, called Anatolia, Armenia, Asia Minor, Pontos, or Kurdistan among other names. Here, we ask contributors to take the landscapes of present-day Turkey as a case-study in order to draw attention to the historical and linguistic, social and political, geographic and ethnographic meanings attributed to ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ by a wide range of people including, but not limited to, Albanians, Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Bosnians, Caucasians, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds, Laz, Turks, and Zazas in and out of Turkey.

Études arméniennes contemporaines invites submissions in any areas of the Humanities and Social Sciences including History, Anthropology, Geography, Sociology, Political Science as well as other sub-disciplines and fields. The journal encourages innovative, multidisciplinary, comparative, and collaborative approaches. A few possible angles from which to approach the topic include, but are certainly not restricted, to:

1. Representation: How has the territory of modern-day Turkey been imagined or constructed as a ‘homeland’ by various groups over the years since the 1910s? How has its landscape been represented in music, literature, cinema, visual arts, material culture, or cuisine, and what tensions seem to be the most recurring?
2. Diaspora: What is ‘home’ for a community that cannot return or does not wish to do so? How do such expatriate groups maintain a relationship with what sometimes seems like a mythical place? How do ‘homes’ affect social consciousness or group solidarity abroad?
3. Minority: How do different minority groups remember their relationship with other communities in the ‘homeland?’ How do these contacts and relations change once outside the ‘homeland?’ What happens when your relationship to ‘home’ is one of belonging as well as displacement for minorities such as Armenians living in Turkey today? Similarly, what happens when ‘home’ is both near and far as is the case of Turks in the Balkans?
4. Gender and Sexuality: How are the definitions, constructions, and imaginations of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ gendered? What role do men and women play in transmitting memories, healing traumas, rebuilding families? How is kinship affected? How might transgender or queer analyses of ‘homeland’ further expand our understanding? What other exclusions or biases hide behind the (re)construction of ‘homes?’
5. Memory: What role do memories play in forming a ‘homeland?’ How do these help or hinder a sense of belonging? How is nostalgia for ‘home’ formed through remembering? What is the relationship between remembrances and visual or material culture? How do new forms of relation to a ‘homeland,’ through social media or pilgrim tours, shape the memories of something lost?

Submission guidelines
The editors invite submissions in English or French. Article abstracts approximately 500 words, along with a working title and a short biographical note, should be sent by 1 November 2019 to the editors of the issue:

Laurent Dissard laurent.dissard@univ-pau.fr
Yaşar Tolga Cora tolga.cora@boun.edu.tr

The articles (6000-8000 words, including notes and bibliography) should be sent to the editors to be selected for peer review by 1 March 2020. Publication is planned between December 2020 and June 2021 (possibly double issue).

Scientific Committee
Boris Adjemian boris.adjemian@gmail.com
Hourig Attarian hourig.attarian@mail.mcgill.ca
Vazken Davidian vazkenkdavidian@gmail.com
Dzovinar Derderian dzovinar@umich.edu
Alexandra Garbarini agarbari@williams.edu
Annie Jafalian annie.jafalian@univ-lyon3.fr
David Low dljlow@hotmail.com
Stéphanie Prévost stephprevostsp@gmail.com
Duygu Tasalp dtasalp@gmail.com
Julien Zarifian jzarifian@hotmail.com