This event is part of a MEMEAC series in commemoration of the Armenian Genocide Centenary. 

In this talk, Dr. Nucho focuses on two informal settlements in a suburb of Beirut with a large Armenian population called Bourj Hammoud in order to discuss the relationship between informal property regimes and the production of sectarian community in Lebanon. As these two differing examples will show, the production of sectarian community is about more than belonging to an ethno-religious sect. Dr. Nucho argues that a closer look at the way that community is constructed and how the built environment is used to enforce these notions of belonging is vital to understanding how the dialogic process of sectarianizing identities and space works together through technologies of property ownership, sets of documentation as well as notions of authenticity and nostalgia.

Dr. Joanne Randa Nucho is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. She an anthropologist and filmmaker who earned her PhD from the University of California, Irvine in 2013.

Dr. Christa Salamandra (Anthropology, Lehman and the Graduate Center, CUNY) will offer comments and moderate the Q&A.