Marie Lundgren

This paper will focus on the primary mechanisms which have uniquely shaped the reverberations of the Armenian genocide and diaspora in the midwestern United States, in order to elucidate the work that the Armenian genocide and diaspora ask of Armenian Americans living today. I am interested in how the “baggage” of Armenian ethno-religious-cultural background instructs identity within an Armenian collectivity, an American collectivity, as well as individual identities across these often competing categories. Ultimately, this paper will explicate how individuals construct their own "Armenian-ness" within these and against these categories in light of the reverberations of the genocide and diaspora.