FRESNO — Dr. Ohannes Kiliçdagi has been named as the 17th Henry S. Khanzadian Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies for the Fall 2020 semester at Fresno State. Dr. Kiliçdagi is a 2014 graduate of Bogaziçi University in Istanbul, where he completed a Ph.D. titled “Socio-Political Reflections and Expectations of the Ottoman Armenians after the 1908 Revolution: Between Hope and Despair.”
Dr. Kiliçdagi was the Nikit and Eleanora Ordjanian Visiting Professor at Middle Eastern South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University for Spring 2020. He was accepted between 2017 and 2019 as a post-doctoral fellow by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University and completed a pre-doctoral fellowship (2011-2012) at the Armenians Studies Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Dr. Kiliçdagi will teach a course on “Awakening, Death, and Survival: The History of Ottoman Armenians in Modern Times” during the Fall 2020 semester. The course will follow the trajectory of Armenians in Ottoman-Turkish society from the early nineteenth century to the present. The history of Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire is a tale of ebb and flows, hopes and frustrations. Their history in modern Turkey, on the other hand, is about the struggle to survive and silent resistance to complete disappearance. This course examines this oscillating history between hope and despair and their effort to exist in their homeland, and in this struggle how they invented the ‘third way’ of being Armenian in Turkey, besides in the Diaspora and in the nation state, Armenia, Soviet or not.
While at Fresno State, Dr. Kiliçdagi will give three public lectures, the first one on “‘Living Together Requires Dying Together”’: Conscription of Armenians into the Ottoman Army after the 1908 Revolution.” It will take place virtually on Friday, September 18. The talk will be about how Armenians, along other non-Muslims started to be enlisted into the Ottoman army and served there as soldiers and officers after the 1908 Revolution, and the restoration of the constitution and parliament.
Dr. Kiliçdagi’s special interests are the history of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, intercommunal relations in multi-ethnoreligious societies, citizenship and minorities, the history of citizenship and military service, historical sociology, and the philosophy of history. He has been writing a column in Agos, an Istanbul bilingual weekly Armenian newspaper established by Hrant Dink and his friends, since 2011.
For information about Dr. Kiliçdagi’s lectures please follow Armenian Studies on its Facebook page, @ArmenianStudiesFresnoState or at the Program website, www. fresnostate.edu/armenianstudies.
