CALL FOR PAPER

Thematic issue of the Journal of Genocide Research (JGR)

Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish Population and Extermination Policies

The murder and expulsion of Anatolian Armenians during World War I is still labelled as a “forgotten genocide”. However, the fate of the Armenians has attracted significant attention and a real avalanche of books and articles on the Armenian catastrophe has been published in recent years. And although the Turkish state still denies the Armenian Genocide, the event has entered the realm of global collective memory (not least due to the impact of the internationally perceived commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in 2005).

What is still largely forgotten, however, are the murder, expulsion and deportation of other ethnic groups like Assyrians, Greeks, Kurds and Arabs by the Young Turks. If at all, these victim groups’ fates are dealt with mainly in their own national histories. However, since Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and Kurdish national histories are mainly concerned with their own groups’ doom the wider context is largely amiss. Furthermore, their results are lost for a wider historical scholarship. To assess the knowledge on these groups and to overcome a national historical approach is the aim of this thematic issue of the Journal of Genocide Research. It will contribute to our understanding of the Young Turks’ population and extermination policies in all its complexities and help to bring the forgotten victims' stories "back" into genocide scholarship.

The editors welcome original and innovative articles dealing with all possible aspects of Young Turkish population and extermination policies before and during World War I. After initial editor screening, all submissions will undergo peer review.

Proposals (max 1.5 pages for papers should be submitted together with a short curriculum vitae by April 5, 2007 to both

Dominik J. Schaller (dominik.j.schaller@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de) and

Jürgen Zimmerer (j.zimmerer@sheffield.ac.uk)

The articles, which should be a maximum of 8500 words including documentation, will be due at September 1, 2007.

Please share this information with interested colleagues!

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Journal of Genocide Research

Editors: Henry R. Huttenbach, Dominik J. Schaller, Jürgen Zimmerer

http://www.informaworld.com/jgr

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INOGS - International Network of Genocide Scholars
http://www.inogs.com

President: Jürgen Zimmerer (Sheffield)
Vice President: Henning Melber (Uppsala)
Executive Secretary: Dominik J. Schaller (Bern/Heidelberg)
Vice Executive Secretary: Jan-Bart Gewald (Leiden)

Journal of Genocide Research - the official INOGS Journal
http://www.informaworld.com/jgr

Transgendering Human Rights: A Postcolonial Reading of Subcultures of Resistance

Call for papers for 2007 MLA, Chicago, December 27-30

Postcolonial narratives of the transgendered have framed themselves in ways distinct from those encountered in the Euro-American circuits of cultural production and distribution. In India the sexual practices of the transgendered were acknowledged and elaborated in the treatise on sexuality—Kamasutra. But during British colonial rule the transgendered community came under legal surveillance for issues of public decency. In postcolonial India the transgendered collective of the hijras, with the oft experienced multidimensional violence against them, have come to signify the deep structural connection between socioeconomic exploitation and lack of civil/political rights. Controversial texts like Domique Lapierre’s City of Joy, resisted as the product of the imperialistic gaze, have traced the lifestyle of the transgendered community in Calcutta. In the light of the above, this proposed special session of the MLA aims to examine how violence in its many forms against the transgendered community across a range of geopolitics has been addressed through various cultural productions and the politics around such representations. The goal is to locate ourselves at the intersection of various representational practices and human rights laws and politics around the figure of the transgendered in postcolonial contexts.

The following questions might suggest possible routes of exploration though we are looking forward to other innovative thinking:

How do cultural representations of transgendered lives challenge the current legal discourse of human rights?

Does locating the representation of transgender issues in cultural productions within a framework based on the systemic link between socioeconomic rights and civil and political rights significantly alter our understanding of transgender cultures?

Can the socioeconomic position of the transgendered be traced through the changing discourses on sexuality?

How does the politics of postcolonial representations of the transgendered demarcate itself from that of other transgendered representations?

What are the distinctive textual strategies which transgendered people use to negotiate prescriptive religions that facilitate the performance of normative gender roles as routes of access to spiritual salvation? What are the other kinds of representational activities of the transgendered that facilitate such negotiations?

Finally, how have auto-ethnographies of transgendered individuals/collectives—whether in the form of photographic exhibitions, documentary films, or other narratives genres—significantly differed from state-sanctioned discourses about the transgendered?

Please e-mail abstracts of 250-500 words along with contact information and a 2-page CV by March 21 to:

Basuli Deb
Michigan State University, USA
debbasul@msu.edu

AND

Annedith Schneider
Sabanci University, Turkey
schneider@sabanciuniv.edu