Zeynep Devrim Gürsel to Give Lecture at NAASR ON “Classifying The Cartozians: Visibility And Citizenship”

BELMONT, MA — The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will host an in-person and online lecture by Dr. Zeynep Devrim Gürsel titled “Classifying the Cartozians: Visibility and Citizenship,” on Thursday, October 24, 2024, at 7:30 p.m. (Eastern) / 4:30 (Pacific), at the NAASR Vartan Gregorian Building, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA.  The program will be the 3^rd Annual Vartan Gregorian Memorial Lecture.

This will be an in-person event and also presented online live via Zoom (Registration: https://bit.ly/3TNTr5l) and YouTube (www.youtube.com/c/ArmenianStudies).

T. O. Cartozian was naturalized in Portland, Oregon on May 17, 1923, a decision that was immediately challenged on racial grounds. The photograph of the Cartozian family (above) that appeared in the Oregonian newspaper during the trial that followed is well-known in Armenian American history. However, this was not the first time the family was photographed at a crucial juncture in their status as citizens.

This lecture addresses the politics of visibility and legal belonging by following the Cartozian family—from their sitting for an Ottoman expatriation portrait to exit the Ottoman Empire in 1906 to the family’s own deft use of advertising and portrait photography in the United States. At a time when several groups were deemed ineligible for citizenship on account of not being “white,” the very grounds on which “whiteness” was to be determined were continually shifting. In order to become U.S. citizens, the Cartozians had to exit the category of “Asiatic” and join the ranks of the unmarked citizenry in the United States. Remarkably, they managed to do so while advertising their family business frequently and boldly as “America’s Largest Oriental Rug Organization.”

Dr. Zeynep Devrim Gürsel is a media anthropologist and Associate Professor in the department of Anthropology at Rutgers University.  She has spent the last decade researching terk-i tabiiyet photographs, expatriation photographs taken of Ottoman Armenians between 1896 and 1908 to permit their emigration but prevent their return to the empire.  The resulting project, Portraits of Unbelonging, has led her across the United States to meet with descendants of those photographed and learn what became of the families she first encountered in the Ottoman archives.

Vartan Gregorian (1934-2021) was a brilliant educator, humanitarian, and friend after whom NAASR’s headquarters building is named. Born in Tabriz, Iran, he received his secondary education at Collège Arménien in Beirut, Lebanon, and graduated from and received a PhD in history and humanities from Stanford University. After an academic career spanning two decades, including a period as Tarzian Professor of Armenian and Caucasian History at the University of Pennsylvania, Gregorian served as President of The New York Public Library, President of Brown University, and President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.