A lecture entitled "Massacres and Resistance

Belmont Citizen-Herald  >  Arts & Lifestyle

Lecture, open house at NAASR
Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Dr. David Gaunt, professor of history at Sdertrn University College, Stockholm, Sweden, will give a lecture entitled "Massacres and Resistance: The Genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians Based on New Evidence from the Archives" on Thursday, Dec. 7 at 8 p.m. at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Center , 395 Concord Ave., Belmont.

    This lecture, Gaunt's first in the Boston area, will be co-sponsored by NAASR and the United Assyrian Association of New England. The lecture will begin promptly at 8 p.m.

    Preceding and following Gaunt's lecture, NAASR will hold its annual holiday open house, featuring a special sale in NAASR's bookstore, refreshments, music, gift-wrapping, and slide presentation of highlights from NAASR's recent 50th Anniversary Celebration. The bookstore will open at 6 p.m. and remain open until 11 p.m.

    The lecture will be based on findings from Gaunt's recently-published book, "Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I," which will be on sale and available for signing by the author.

    Gaunt will detail how the persecution of Armenian and Assyrian Christian minorities was organized on the national and local levels in places where Armenian and Assyrian populations overlap. His work is based on unique access to hundreds of documents in the archives of Istanbul and Ankara, as well as documents of Iranian, Russian, Arabic, Armenian, Assyrian, French and German origin. Most of these documents have never been published before. The new documents fill in some of the blank spaces in the history of genocide.

    Admission to the event is free (donations appreciated). For more information call 617-489-1610, or e-mail hq@naa