| When: | Back to Calendar March 15, 2009 @ 5:00 PM | Where: | Ararat Home 15105 Mission Hills Road Mission Hills,CA 91345 USA |
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| Categories: | Community Events |
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The Adana Massacres: A Psychosocial Analysis
The Ararat-Eskijian Museum and the National Association for Armenian Studies
and Research (NAASR) presents a lecture by Dr. Gregory Ketabjian on the Adana Massacres: A psychological Analysis with comments by Dr. Hrair Dekmejian Professor of Political Science Director, USC Institute of Armenian Studies, on Sunday, March 15th, at 4:00 p.m., at Ararat-Eskijian Museum, 15105 Mission Hills Rd, Mission Hills CA 91343.
Drawing on Hagop Terzian’s personal account of the Adana Massacres (The Catastrophe of Cilicia, publ. 1912), Dr. Gregory Ketabgian will explore the use of social and psychological methods by which the instigators of the 1909 Adana massacres influenced average people to commit torture, murder, and genocidal acts. These principles are supported with more recent psychological experiments and through comparison with the testimonies of participants in the Mi Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War and more recent abuses in Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
Hagop Terzian, having watched his pharmacy go up in smoke and having lost his newborn son during the Adana massacres, moved to Constantinople and opened a new pharmacy called “Adana.” A psychosocial explanation of human behavior may be seen as a means to demonstrate the reasons for the events that culminated in the Armenian Genocide in 1915, as well as an explanation for the Turkish government’s ongoing policy of denial. A better knowledge among the public about these processes may help to prevent future genocides from being initiated.
More information about Ketabjian and Dekmejian’s lecture you may be contacting NAASR at 617-489-1610, e-mailing [email protected], or by writing to NAASR, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA 02478; or the Ararat-Eskijian Museum at 818-838-4862 or e-mailing
Belmont, MA
March 01, 2009