Genocidal captivity: (Re)telling the stories of Armenian and Yezidi women survivors

1915年，在亚美尼亚种族灭绝期间，数千名妇女被“吸收”到土耳其、库尔德和阿拉伯家庭中。之后，一些人逃脱或被援助组织营救，重新加入亚美尼亚社区。近一个世纪后的2014年，在邻国伊拉克，数千名耶济迪妇女被ISIS绑架，并成为性奴隶。一些人在救援网络的帮助下成功逃脱，并与其他耶济迪幸存者一起进入难民营。重新融入社会是一个令人担忧的过程，而且往往是被排除在外的过程。随着关于性和宗教纯洁性的禁忌被打破，那些从囚禁中返回的人有时被视为无法真正返回。这些妇女的故事在很大程度上仍然是不为人知和不为人知的：相反，她们被转变为殉难、受害社区的象征，以及人道主义干预的场所。无论是有意还是无意，非政府组织经常在筹款材料和援助实践中复制这些排他性框架。学术界也一直在努力描绘这种暴力的经历。我将与三个项目伙伴合作，他们已经在挑战这些有问题的框架，以解决三个关键的悬而未决的问题：1)这些妇女在令人不安的复杂性中被囚禁和重返社会的经历是什么？2)学者、非政府组织和艺术家如何以不同的方式撰写和可视化这些故事，以使我们目前对这种暴力的理解和反应产生问题并颠覆我们目前的理解和反应？3)非政府组织如何从过去的经验中学习，以更好地支持大规模性别暴力后的重返社会和恢复？我将首先前往伊拉克采访耶兹迪幸存者，与慈善机构自由叶兹迪基金会合作。在美国和加拿大，我将完成对亚美尼亚妇女的档案研究，并向散居国外的亚美尼亚社区发表演讲，以帮助我收集种族灭绝囚禁的家庭故事。然后我将把重点放在一本比较书上。扩展和调整了我之前关于亚美尼亚女性幸存者的工作，我接受了大屠杀研究相关领域的一个关键挑战：如何写暴力？如何唤起女性对种族灭绝、囚禁和重新融入社会的困惑和不和谐的经历？在亚美尼亚妇女本身没有证词的情况下，我将与国家、人道主义和其他来源相反地阅读，并纳入我收集的家庭故事。我对耶兹迪妇女的采访将使我了解到我对亚美尼亚妇女经历的看法，并提供关键的原始材料。我将通过与早期同龄人的两个学术研讨会，进一步发展我对“写作暴力”的想法，在研讨会上，我们合作探索写作暴力困难的解决方案。团契的其余部分致力于重新想象这些女性的经历的公共表现，并影响政策和学术。维纳大屠杀图书馆的一个展览是与自由叶兹迪基金会和亚美尼亚研究所联合开发的，将讲述十名亚美尼亚妇女和十名叶兹迪妇女被囚禁的不同故事，探索声音、文件和代表性的问题。与展览同时进行的还有两项活动：使观众能够参与这些问题的一系列活动，以及非政府组织政策简报会，概述当前做法的问题并提供替代办法。一篇关于“种族灭绝圈养”的期刊文章将为性别和种族灭绝的研究提供一个新的方向。这个项目符合并发展了每个项目合作伙伴的使命。它将重塑公众对种族灭绝和非政府组织做法的理解。它将增加公众和政策制定者对ISIS针对耶兹迪人的暴力的认可，并将为亚美尼亚社区提供一个适当的历史线索，展示隐藏的家庭故事。该奖学金将使我成为种族灭绝研究的新兴研究带头人，并将使重大影响和知识交流活动重新想象种族灭绝囚禁的讲述。

In 1915, during the Armenian genocide, thousands of women were 'absorbed' into Turkish, Kurdish and Arab households. Afterwards, some escaped or were rescued by aid organisations, and rejoined the Armenian community. Almost a century later in 2014, in neighbouring Iraq, thousands of Yezidi women were abducted by ISIS and held in sexual slavery. Some managed to escape, helped by rescue networks, and joined other Yezidi survivors in refugee camps.Reintegration was a fraught and often exclusionary process. With taboos over sexual and religious purity broken, those who returned from captivity were sometimes viewed as unable to truly return. The women's stories remained largely untold and unheard: instead they were converted into symbols of a martyred, victimised community, and a site for humanitarian intervention.Often, wittingly or unwittingly, NGOs reproduce these exclusionary frameworks, in both fundraising materials and aid practices. Scholarship, too, has struggled to depict the experience of such violence. I will collaborate with three Project Partners who are already challenging these problematic frameworks to address three key unanswered questions: 1) What were these women's experiences of captivity and reintegration, in all their uncomfortable complexity?2) How can academics, NGOs, and artists write and visualise these stories differently, to problematise and subvert our current understandings of and responses to this violence?3) How can NGOs learn from past experiences to better support reintegration and recovery after mass gendered violence?I will first travel to Iraq to interview Yezidi survivors, working with the charity Free Yezidi Foundation. In the US and Canada I will complete archival research on Armenian women and give talks to Armenian diaspora communities to assist me in gathering family stories of genocidal captivity. I will then focus on a comparative book. Extending and reorienting my previous work on Armenian women survivors, I take up a key challenge from the cognate field of Holocaust Studies: how to write violence? How to evoke the women's disorienting, jarring experiences of genocide, captivity, and reintegration? In the absence of testimony from the Armenian women themselves, I will read state, humanitarian, and other sources against the grain, and incorporate the family stories I have gathered. My interviews with Yezidi women will inform my thinking about Armenian women's experiences, and provide key primary material. I will develop my ideas on 'writing violence' further via two academic workshops with early-career peers, in which we collaboratively explore solutions to the difficulties of writing violence.The rest of the Fellowship is devoted to reimagining the public representation of these women's experiences, and influencing policy and scholarship. An exhibition at the Wiener Holocaust Library, developed in conjunction with Free Yezidi Foundation and the Armenian Institute, will tell the diverse captivity stories of ten Armenian and ten Yezidi women, exploring questions of voice, documentation, and representation. Accompanying the exhibition are two further interventions: a series of events enabling audiences to engage with these issues, and a NGO policy briefing, outlining the problems with current practices and offering alternatives. A journal article on 'genocidal captivity' will offer a new direction for studies of gender and genocide.This project dovetails with and develops the missions of each Project Partner. It will reshape the public understanding of genocide, and NGO practices. It will increase public and policymaker recognition of ISIS violence against the Yezidi, and will provide a proper historical articulation of hidden family stories for Armenian communities. The Fellowship will establish me as an emerging research leader in Genocide Studies, and will enable significant impact and knowledge exchange activities to reimagine the telling of genocidal captivity.