Elyse Semerdjian
Biographic Data
| ID | 279024 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elyse Semerdjian |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elyse |
| FAMILY NAME | Semerdjian |
| SIGNATURE | SEMERDJIAN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Whitman College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8277-2092 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A World Without Civilians
Mary Kaldor claimed that before World War II one civilian died for every eight combatants, that figure inversed with eight civilians dying for every soldier afterward. Kaldor’s averages are only slightly different in the post-9/11 era of “humane war” where civilians now comprise 90 per cent of wartime casualties. In an attempt to justify illegal acts of collective punishment and targeted assassinations, states have declared civilians “collateral …
Gazafication and Genocide by Attrition in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
“Who Remembers the Armenians?”I remember themand I ride the nightmare bus with themeach nightand my coffee, this morningI'm drinking it with them You, murderer -Who remembers you? — Najwan Darwish
Phantom Limbs, Embodied Horror, and the Afterlives of the Armenian Genocide
The affective horrors of the Armenian genocide leave traces upon the living. Most pilgrims who visit sites of mass killing in contemporary Syria and Turkey note that they feel a profound sense of sadness and are overcome with tears of mourning while visiting the sites. This essay explores these experiences along with two anomalous cases of visitors who had an altogether different experience of the uncanny including physical ailment. Semerdjian su…
Bone memory: The necrogeography of the Armenian Genocide in Dayr al-Zur, Syria
This article discusses how Armenians have collected, displayed and exchanged the bones of their murdered ancestors in formal and informal ceremonies of remembrance in Dayr al-Zur, Syria - the final destination for hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the deportations of 1915. These pilgrimages - replete with overlapping secular and nationalist motifs - are a modern variant of historical pilgrimage practices; yet these bones are more than rel…
Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure
In her detailed study of illicit sexual intercourse and rape in Islamic law, Hina Azam explores formative and classical Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) within two of the earliest Sunni schools of law: the Hanafi and the Maliki traditions. Offering a close critical reading of legal sources in the discipline of Islamic intellectual history, a subfield of Islamic studies, Azam offers a much-needed examination of the overlapping and diverging interpreta…
Armenian Women, Legal Bargaining, and Gendered Politics of Conversion in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Aleppo
This article examines the legal bargaining of Armenian women in the dual Armenian and Islamic legal system in Aleppo. This study based on twenty-two cases of Armenian conversion to Islam informs how conversion, while rare, affected women who found themselves suddenly married to Muslim men and mothers of Muslim children. The archives document women who appeared in the sharia court seeking either to remain tied to their religious communities by res…
The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic World; The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic Worl; The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic World
Dana Sajdi. The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant
Journal Article Dana Sajdi. The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant. Get access Dana Sajdi. The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. xv, 293. Cloth $60.00, e-book $60.00. Elyse Semerdjian Elyse Semerdjian Whitman College [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scho…
Naked Anxiety: Bathhouses, Nudity, and the Dhimmī Woman in 18th-Century Aleppo
In the 18th century, non-Muslims and women crossed social boundaries during a period of increased global consumption, prompting intervention on the part of Ottoman officials. On the imperial level, the sultan promulgated edicts to restrict such crossings, following the path of earlier laws that had regulated public spaces including bathhouses. In Aleppo, a local reflection of these 18th-century trends was increased monitoring of nudity and of con…
Because he is so tender and pretty: Sexual deviance and heresy in eighteenth-century Aleppo
How did the shari‘a courts treat cases of illicit intercourse between men? This study answers that question by examining a successful conviction of a youth named Muhammad accused of sexual liaisons with men resulting in his expulsion from his neighbourhood in 1735. Placing this unique case into its socio-legal context, two readings are possible. One argues that this case represents a form of neighbourhood policing of possible male prostitution. H…
Rewriting the History of Sexuality in the Islamic World
This issue of Hawwa challenges dominant views of sexuality in Islamic societies. Our understanding of sexuality in the Islamic World has been shaped by a number of sources that include Islamic, Orientalist, feminist and pop-cultural discourses. In terms of scholarship traditional Islamic and Orientalist discourses have shaped our academic understanding the most. Both discourses have competing visions of sexuality. On the one hand, they view femal…
Sinful Professions: Illegal Occupations of Women in Ottoman Aleppo, Syria
What was the economic role of women in the Islamic world? Archival sources such as court records reveal that women were employed in a number of legal occupations as moneylenders, buyers and sellers of property, midwives, administrators of religious endowments (waqfs) and textile workers. On the other hand, women were just as active in illegal occupations as prostitutes, procurers of prostitution and distillers of alcohol. This study will show tha…
Sinful Professions: Illegal Occupations of Women in Ottoman Aleppo, Syria
What was the economic role of women in the Islamic world? Archival sources such as court records reveal that women were employed in a number of legal occupations as moneylenders, buyers and sellers of property, midwives, administrators of religious endowments ( waqf s) and textile workers. On the other hand, women were just as active in illegal occupations as prostitutes, procurers of prostitution and distillers of alcohol. This study will show t…
Naked Anxiety: Bathhouses, Nudity, and the Dhimmī Woman in 18th-Century Aleppo
In the 18th century, non-Muslims and women crossed social boundaries during a period of increased global consumption, prompting intervention on the part of Ottoman officials. On the imperial level, the sultan promulgated edicts to restrict such crossings, following the path of earlier laws that had regulated public spaces including bathhouses. In Aleppo, a local reflection of these 18th-century trends was increased monitoring of nudity and of con…
Rewriting the History of Sexuality in the Islamic World
This issue of Hawwa challenges dominant views of sexuality in Islamic societies. Our understanding of sexuality in the Islamic World has been shaped by a number of sources that include Islamic, Orientalist, feminist and pop-cultural discourses. In terms of scholarship traditional Islamic and Orientalist discourses have shaped our academic understanding the most. Both discourses have competing visions of sexuality. On the one hand, they view femal…
Sinful Professions: Illegal Occupations of Women in Ottoman Aleppo, Syria
What was the economic role of women in the Islamic world? Archival sources such as court records reveal that women were employed in a number of legal occupations as moneylenders, buyers and sellers of property, midwives, administrators of religious endowments (waqfs) and textile workers. On the other hand, women were just as active in illegal occupations as prostitutes, procurers of prostitution and distillers of alcohol. This study will show tha…
A World Without Civilians
Mary Kaldor claimed that before World War II one civilian died for every eight combatants, that figure inversed with eight civilians dying for every soldier afterward. Kaldor’s averages are only slightly different in the post-9/11 era of “humane war” where civilians now comprise 90 per cent of wartime casualties. In an attempt to justify illegal acts of collective punishment and targeted assassinations, states have declared civilians “collateral …
Because he is so tender and pretty: Sexual deviance and heresy in eighteenth-century Aleppo
How did the shari‘a courts treat cases of illicit intercourse between men? This study answers that question by examining a successful conviction of a youth named Muhammad accused of sexual liaisons with men resulting in his expulsion from his neighbourhood in 1735. Placing this unique case into its socio-legal context, two readings are possible. One argues that this case represents a form of neighbourhood policing of possible male prostitution. H…
Gazafication and Genocide by Attrition in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
“Who Remembers the Armenians?”I remember themand I ride the nightmare bus with themeach nightand my coffee, this morningI'm drinking it with them You, murderer -Who remembers you? — Najwan Darwish
Phantom Limbs, Embodied Horror, and the Afterlives of the Armenian Genocide
The affective horrors of the Armenian genocide leave traces upon the living. Most pilgrims who visit sites of mass killing in contemporary Syria and Turkey note that they feel a profound sense of sadness and are overcome with tears of mourning while visiting the sites. This essay explores these experiences along with two anomalous cases of visitors who had an altogether different experience of the uncanny including physical ailment. Semerdjian su…
Armenian Women, Legal Bargaining, and Gendered Politics of Conversion in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Aleppo
This article examines the legal bargaining of Armenian women in the dual Armenian and Islamic legal system in Aleppo. This study based on twenty-two cases of Armenian conversion to Islam informs how conversion, while rare, affected women who found themselves suddenly married to Muslim men and mothers of Muslim children. The archives document women who appeared in the sharia court seeking either to remain tied to their religious communities by res…
Sinful Professions: Illegal Occupations of Women in Ottoman Aleppo, Syria
What was the economic role of women in the Islamic world? Archival sources such as court records reveal that women were employed in a number of legal occupations as moneylenders, buyers and sellers of property, midwives, administrators of religious endowments (waqfs) and textile workers. On the other hand, women were just as active in illegal occupations as prostitutes, procurers of prostitution and distillers of alcohol. This study will show tha…
Sinful Professions: Illegal Occupations of Women in Ottoman Aleppo, Syria
What was the economic role of women in the Islamic world? Archival sources such as court records reveal that women were employed in a number of legal occupations as moneylenders, buyers and sellers of property, midwives, administrators of religious endowments ( waqf s) and textile workers. On the other hand, women were just as active in illegal occupations as prostitutes, procurers of prostitution and distillers of alcohol. This study will show t…
Rewriting the History of Sexuality in the Islamic World
This issue of Hawwa challenges dominant views of sexuality in Islamic societies. Our understanding of sexuality in the Islamic World has been shaped by a number of sources that include Islamic, Orientalist, feminist and pop-cultural discourses. In terms of scholarship traditional Islamic and Orientalist discourses have shaped our academic understanding the most. Both discourses have competing visions of sexuality. On the one hand, they view femal…
Because he is so tender and pretty: Sexual deviance and heresy in eighteenth-century Aleppo
How did the shari‘a courts treat cases of illicit intercourse between men? This study answers that question by examining a successful conviction of a youth named Muhammad accused of sexual liaisons with men resulting in his expulsion from his neighbourhood in 1735. Placing this unique case into its socio-legal context, two readings are possible. One argues that this case represents a form of neighbourhood policing of possible male prostitution. H…
Naked Anxiety: Bathhouses, Nudity, and the Dhimmī Woman in 18th-Century Aleppo
In the 18th century, non-Muslims and women crossed social boundaries during a period of increased global consumption, prompting intervention on the part of Ottoman officials. On the imperial level, the sultan promulgated edicts to restrict such crossings, following the path of earlier laws that had regulated public spaces including bathhouses. In Aleppo, a local reflection of these 18th-century trends was increased monitoring of nudity and of con…
Dana Sajdi. The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant
Journal Article Dana Sajdi. The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant. Get access Dana Sajdi. The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. xv, 293. Cloth $60.00, e-book $60.00. Elyse Semerdjian Elyse Semerdjian Whitman College [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scho…
The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic World; The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic Worl; The Armenians in the Medieval Islamic World
Armenian Women, Legal Bargaining, and Gendered Politics of Conversion in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Aleppo
This article examines the legal bargaining of Armenian women in the dual Armenian and Islamic legal system in Aleppo. This study based on twenty-two cases of Armenian conversion to Islam informs how conversion, while rare, affected women who found themselves suddenly married to Muslim men and mothers of Muslim children. The archives document women who appeared in the sharia court seeking either to remain tied to their religious communities by res…
Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure
In her detailed study of illicit sexual intercourse and rape in Islamic law, Hina Azam explores formative and classical Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) within two of the earliest Sunni schools of law: the Hanafi and the Maliki traditions. Offering a close critical reading of legal sources in the discipline of Islamic intellectual history, a subfield of Islamic studies, Azam offers a much-needed examination of the overlapping and diverging interpreta…
Bone memory: The necrogeography of the Armenian Genocide in Dayr al-Zur, Syria
This article discusses how Armenians have collected, displayed and exchanged the bones of their murdered ancestors in formal and informal ceremonies of remembrance in Dayr al-Zur, Syria - the final destination for hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the deportations of 1915. These pilgrimages - replete with overlapping secular and nationalist motifs - are a modern variant of historical pilgrimage practices; yet these bones are more than rel…
Phantom Limbs, Embodied Horror, and the Afterlives of the Armenian Genocide
The affective horrors of the Armenian genocide leave traces upon the living. Most pilgrims who visit sites of mass killing in contemporary Syria and Turkey note that they feel a profound sense of sadness and are overcome with tears of mourning while visiting the sites. This essay explores these experiences along with two anomalous cases of visitors who had an altogether different experience of the uncanny including physical ailment. Semerdjian su…
Gazafication and Genocide by Attrition in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
“Who Remembers the Armenians?”I remember themand I ride the nightmare bus with themeach nightand my coffee, this morningI'm drinking it with them You, murderer -Who remembers you? — Najwan Darwish
A World Without Civilians
Mary Kaldor claimed that before World War II one civilian died for every eight combatants, that figure inversed with eight civilians dying for every soldier afterward. Kaldor’s averages are only slightly different in the post-9/11 era of “humane war” where civilians now comprise 90 per cent of wartime casualties. In an attempt to justify illegal acts of collective punishment and targeted assassinations, states have declared civilians “collateral …
History (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Islam (8 works) · Islamic Studies and History (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Ancient history (7 works) · History (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Art (5 works) · Archaeology (4 works)