Claudia Yaghoobi | Iranian Armenian Cultural Lineages in the Diaspora

Announced by the University of Pittsburgh

Speaker: Claudia Yaghoobi, Professor, University of North Carolina

In this talk, drawing from her lived experiences as well as analyzing diasporic Iranian Armenian cultural productions, Claudia Yaghoobi will examine the ways that Iranian Armenians negotiate their identities as minoritized population in Iran and in the US within the liminal space of diaspora. Yaghoobi argues that this liminal state of fluidity helps them to develop a resilience towards ambiguity and handling ambivalence in dealing with various cultures as well as resisting dualistic thinking which in turn allows them to move beyond national boundaries to transnationalism, yet simultaneously display the collective Armenian identity characterized by flexibility, adaptability, and continuity as a result of both multiple uprooting and a Genocide that continues to this day. They serve as a bridge between the homeland and the host nation, occupying the transformational passageway, which requires them to not only risk being in a transitory space and give up the safe space of home and the power that comes with it, but also through doing so, they create transformative works of literature and art.