Matthew Ghazarian (Yale University), “Reaped and Sown: Famine & Ethnic Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire” (Council on Middle East Studies)

Hosted by Jonathan Wyrtzen

 

Matthew Hagop Ghazarian is historian of agrarian life, violence, and ethnicity in the late Ottoman Empire. His work asks how environmental, technological, and financial forces spur on the construction or deconstruction of social categories and of peace or conflict between them. His current research focuses on ethnic and sectarian divides among Armenians, Kurds, and Turks in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Following new social visions alongside re-organizations of food, capital, and land, the project traces their interplay at key moments to show how rigid notions of difference and belonging gained currency among rural people.