03.6.2015 Melissa Bilal lullabies

Knowing Otherwise: The Armenian
Friday,
March 6,
Community of Istanbul and
2015, 6.30 pm
Grandmothers’ Lullabies
talk and presentation by
Melissa Bilal
In the Armenian community of Bolis (Istanbul), lullabies contribute
to the construction of a particular sense of the past in relation to the
present. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, Dr. Bilal argues that the
lullabies grandmothers sing and the stories they narrate transmit
both their desire to speak and to remain silent. Consequently, elderly
Armenian women powerfully shape a genuine mode of knowing and
being in a world where their presence and absence in Turkey is
denied.
Room C197
The Graduate Center,
CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue
at 34th Street
New York, NY 10016
(212) 817-7571
[email protected]
Co-sponsored with
the Ph.D. Program
in
Ethnomusicology
Melissa Bilal is a Mellon postdoctoral teaching fellow at Columbia University,
Department of Music. She received her Ph.D. in Music from the University of
Chicago in 2013. Her dissertation analyzes the history of Armenian lullabies from
mid-19th century to the present. She is the author, with Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Bir
Adalet Feryadı, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e Beş Ermeni Feminist Yazar (1862–
1933) [A Cry for Justice: Five Armenian Feminist Writers from the Ottomans to
the Republic (1862–1933)]. Currently, she is researching on the Armenian
ethnographic movement at the turn of the 20th century and the collection of early
songs.
(212) 817-7571
[email protected]