Anoush Tamar Suni ( University of California, Los Angeles)
Buried Histories: Ruins and the Politics of Memory in Anatolia

Anoush Tamar Suni’s dissertation explores the relationship between memory, materiality, and music in Turkey, focusing on the intersecting histories of Turkish, Kurdish, and Armenian communities in the region of Van over the past century. She examines how ruins of past communities and their histories shape lived experience, historical understanding, and musical expression today. Taking into consideration the complex history of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire and its transformation into the Turkish nation-state, Suni investigates how contemporary relations between Turkish, Kurdish, and Armenian communities in Anatolia have been shaped through historical processes, and how present social configurations shape how various pasts are imagined. Suni’s research approaches these pasts as part of a shared historical story through an exploration of common spatial, cultural and material experiences of living among ruins. Through an investigation of how particular ruins, such as historical churches, are being reimagined, renovated, and narrated through song, she mobilizes questions of temporal subjectivities, spatial belongings, and contemporary historical understanding throughout the region. Drawing on oral history, ethnography, and ethnomusicology, Suni’s research addresses the following principal questions: 1) How are local and communal histories and memory embodied and expressed through narratives and songs? 2) How does the built and ruined environment shape the present social world and understandings of the past in Eastern Anatolia?