The University of Michigan Armenian Studies Program hosted Professor Seta B. Dadoyan for a well-attended lecture in the International Institute on Jan. 27. Dadoyan is a renowned specialist in Armenian social-political and intellectual cultures in the medieval and modern Near Eastern world.
In her public lecture, she spoke about “Islam and the Armenians: Paradigms of a Near Eastern Dialectic.” Dadoyan finds that there is a gap between the lived Armenian experience with Islam and the record of those interactions, where Islam is commonly ethnicized and viewed as the faith of hostile ethnic groups. Further, the model of religious difference and persecution, which is commonly used to explain interactions with Muslims, more accurately describes exceptions than general patterns. She argues that a new paradigm of Armenian-Islamic history could yield a more intriguing Near Eastern landscape that is historically more accurate, philosophically more consistent, and intellectually more challenging. Since Armenians lived and live in the Near Eastern world, their history should be written as a part of regional history. In response to a question about what makes a Muslim Armenian an Armenian, Dadoyan replied that this is a big issue because a fixed notion has developed that Armenians have to be Christian, but Muslim Armenians also maintained their ethnic consciousness.
Dadoyan is the author of nearly 50 articles and five books. Her manuscript, “The Armenians and Islam: Paradigms of Medieval Interactions,” is forthcoming with E.J. Brill. Dadoyan currently teaches at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in New Rochelle, N.Y. and at Queens College, CUNY. She previously taught at Haigazian University and the Lebanese-American University, and was a professor of cultural studies at the American University of Beirut from 1986-2005.
While visiting the University of Michigan, Dadoyan also guest lectured in Gerard Libaridian’s class, “Islam and Armenians.”
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Thank You for the 3 Volume The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic World of Professor Seta B. Dadoyan … kindly note at page 199 of volume II, probably one typing error to be corrected in future re-prints: “Sanahin southern part of present Republic of Armenia” has maybe to be corrected to northern part …!