Infidelities

CASC gathers around the polyvalent provocation of “infidelities” – in the plural – to center “the otherness” which constitutes the center; to think from the margins and become unfaithful to the clear-cut boundaries of dominant narratives of nationalism and heteropatriarchy. To do “Armenian Studies Otherwise” means gathering the outcasts, betraying the “grand” field, and appropriating the slur “infidel” in a postcolonial key that captures Armenian positionalities in relation to both, hegemonic Western Christianity and Islamicate imperial difference, to subalternity, and the production of racial, sexual, and colonial formations of difference. In-fidelity as an inscription, however, does not describe a positive identity but a circumscribed space of alternative possibilities we wish to embrace.

Our aim is to center critical, queer-feminist, postcolonial, and performative approaches to the study of Armenian history, diaspora, memory, language, culture, and displacement within and beyond the Middle East, wider West Asia, and the Americas. 

“Infidelities” brings together scholars, curators, filmmakers, visual artists, physical theatre performers, and a sound performer, all of whom work either directly in, or tangentially to, Armenian Studies, to flesh out new visions for the field, for the understanding of “Armenianness,” and for categories of identity at large.

Infidelity in an ethno-confessional frame is a double infidelity because of its context in a diaphysite context .
Other in both the direction of East and West as infidelitous; these are the iterations of infidelity  that are commonly cited right now in our area studies context and that is constantly the way through which we seek to understand Armenian otherness 

We attempt to give another iterative layer to the term infidel and infidelities; this layer takes into consideration and has to be necessarily read through the postcolonial lens and the transnational feminist lens and all the other lenses (queer; in relation to “de-imperial”).

Infidelity in the sense of the heretic, the heterodox.

Conferences

Co-sponsored events

Intro text?

Virtual Fora

The Infidelities Virtual Fora bring together recent scholarly, aesthetic, and activist visions of what makes Armenianness around the globe in order to reflect critically upon the new non-alignment of “Armenia,” and in turn how such a state of non-alignment increasingly characterizes a plethora of social relations and global communities. Through a series of thematic-based discussions focused around the polyvalent provocation of “infidelity,” the Virtual Fora focus on a spectrum of lively new directions toward which Armenian Studies is currently moving: feminist and queer interventions; cultural studies of hybrid and syncretic identities; aesthetic imaginings of Armenité beyond text and language; new materialisms and revolutionary change in a postsocialist setting; utopian futures beyond the nation-state; necropolitics, post-memory, and alternative imaginaries of the archive; as well as postcolonial critiques and visions of trauma and “reconciliation.”

Past Events:
March 28, 2020 – How do we shape a “Critical Armenian Studies”? (Host: CASC)
July 18, 2020 – Methodologies for a Critical Armenian Studies (Host: CASC/David Kazanjian)
August 15, 2020 – Race and Critical Armenian Studies (Host: CASC/Veronika Zablotsky)
September 19, 2020 – Indigeneity (Hosts: Tamar Shirinian & Hrag Vartanian)
October 2020 – Wartime (pause on scheduled topics to reflect on the war) (Host: CASC/Deanna Cachoian-Schanz)November 2020 Life-affirming in times of war (pause on scheduled topics) (Host: CASC/Deanna Cachoian-Schanz)