Armenian Studies Program
University of Michigan
1080 S. University Ave., Suite 2603
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106
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PRESS RELEASE
August 5, 2008
Contact: Gloria Caudill, Armenian Studies Program
Telephone: 734.763.0622
Email: gcaudill@umich.edu
Armenian Studies Program, University of Michigan
ASLANIAN AND DUNDAR SELECTED AS POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWS
Dr. Sebouh Aslanian and Dr. Fuat Dundar have been selected as
Manoogian Simone Foundation Post-doctoral Fellows for the 2008-2009
academic year, announced Prof. Gerard Libaridian, Director of the
Armenian Studies Program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Dr. Aslanian defended his dissertation, entitled "From the Indian
Ocean to the Mediterranean: Circulation and the Global Trade Networks
of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa, Isfahan, 1605 to 1747," in the
Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures at
Columbia University in 2007. The dissertation reassesses, in part, the
usefulness of the "trade diaspora" paradigm for the study of long
distance merchant communities. Dr. Aslanian’s doctoral thesis, awarded
with distinction, was also selected as the best dissertation in the
humanities at Columbia University and represented Columbia at a
national competition in 2008. During the last academic year he was a
Visiting Professor at Whitman College in the state of Washington.
During his tenure, Dr. Aslanian plans to revise and complete a book
manuscript for the University of California Press (World History
Series) of nine chapters, which is based on his dissertation. The
Manoogian Simone fellowship will be crucial in allowing him to
elaborate on two themes in his manuscript. The first theme is related
to the Early Modern world of "trans-imperial cosmopolitanism." The
second theme that he plans to elaborate further is also a paradox
involving Julfan cosmopolitanism. " How is it possible," asks
Dr. Aslanian, "for a merchant community whose cultural values were so
thoroughly cosmopolitan to be among the first communities in the world
to embrace what has now come to be seen as the parochializing logic of
the nation-state?"
While at the University of Michigan, Dr. Aslanian will also teach one
course per semester and deliver public lectures. During the fall
semester, Dr. Aslanian plans to teach a course on "The Indian Ocean in
World History." He is the author of a number of articles.
The second Manoogian Simone Foundation for 2008-2009 will be Dr. Fuat
Dundar. Originally from Turkey, Dr. Dundar completed his doctoral
dissertation in 2007 at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes des Sciences
Sociales in Paris. His massive and original work, "The Ethnic
Engineering of the Committee of Union and Progress and the
Turkification of Anatolia (1913-1918), »has already been published in
Turkey (in Turkish); an English edition is being planned for 2009 in
the United States.
Dr. Dundar’s research while in Ann Arbor will address "Powers and
Ethno-Statistics: Population Censuses as an Arena of Ethno Political
Conflict from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic." The basic
historical source for this study will be Ottoman and Turkish archival
materials and statistical figures so that the instrumentalization of
statistical data by the political power in the course of ethnic
problems can be revealed. The study will scrutinize the population
censuses, which were accomplished beginning from imperial period to
the present day.
Dr. Dundar will teach one course during the Winter 09 semester and
deliver a number of public lectures.
The positions of Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, have been made possible by the Manoogian Simone Foundation
gift to the University’s Armenian Studies Program.