大象传媒

During the Fall 2024 semester, Dr. Merih Erol was a research associate with CCMS.

1. As a visiting scholar at 大象传媒, what about the university, piqued your interest?

What intrigued me most was the diverse research and teaching interests of the faculty members at the Department of History, the CCMS, and the Department of Global Humanities at 大象传媒. Engaging with many of them helped me develop different aspects of my current project on the Armenians in Greece. I discussed the various angles of my project with them and with graduate students whose research areas were closely related to mine. I also greatly enjoyed being in an environment buzzing with students from diverse backgrounds. Despite being an outsider to the debate, I learned a lot from the approaches I observed both at 大象传媒 and in Vancouver generally regarding Canada鈥檚 First Nations.

2. What project(s) did you work on during your stay with CCMS?

During my stay with CCMS, I revisited my previous research on musical discourses and approaches to history and past in the Greek Orthodox community of the Ottoman Empire. I prepared and delivered two lectures at the University of Sacramento and UC Berkeley in early November. However, my primary focus was my current project, which explores the forced migration of Ottoman Armenians from Turkey and their settlement and rehabilitation process in Greece during the interwar years. My lecture, organized by the CCMS and the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies, centered on orphanages and Armenian orphans supported by the American Near East Relief in Greece.

3. If you wanted to introduce students and scholars to migration history, what central and/or critical/emerging concept(s) would you like to highlight?

Forced migration and refugee studies have greatly benefited from new approaches that value the agency of refugees, as opposed to conventional perceptions of refugees as passive subjects. In this sense, Peter Gatrell鈥檚 works have been eye-opening. I would advise students of refugee studies to look beyond the actions and authority of state actors and give voice to refugees themselves by delving into their discourses as reflected in their petitions, publications, and similar materials. There has been a growing scholarship on humanitarianism and refugees in the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I. The studies of Keith D. Watenpaugh, Michelle Tusan, and Davide Rodogno shed light on the shaping of the Middle East and discuss what was at stake regarding the birth of modern humanitarianism. More recently, Vladimir Hamed-Trojansky鈥檚 influential book, Empire of Refugees, introduced us to mid-nineteenth-century population movements in the Ottoman/north Caucasus realm and explained the formation of a pre-WWI refugee regime.

4. For someone looking to familiarize themselves with your scholarship, where would you direct them?

My scholarship has largely been inspired by questions related to the formation and assertion of national and ethnic identity, which I have strived to examine through the lens of music. My book, Greek Orthodox Music in Ottoman Istanbul, published by Indiana University Press, explores the nineteenth-century Constantinopolitan Greek Orthodox elite鈥檚 engagements with their musical pasts. It examines how particular individuals articulated specific discourses on music through their activities at musical associations and journals. Another intertwined area of my research has been my curiosity about how empires and nation-states dealt with religious diversity during the long nineteenth century. For this, one may refer to my articles on conversion and American evangelism in the Ottoman Empire. My most recent research on Armenian refugees in Greece and Greek Armenians will continue to inspire my scholarly endeavors in the coming years.

5. What's next on your academic journey?

Yes, two book chapters of mine will be published this year. One is a survey history of the Rum community in the Ottoman Empire, which will appear in The I.B. Tauris Handbook of the Late Ottoman Empire. The other chapter features Armenian refugees and orphans in interwar Athens and Thessaloniki and will be published in an edited volume exploring the Greek-Turkish War of 1919-1922 and its role in the remaking of the new international order. The ultimate monograph is in progress and will require more time.