Scattered Beads: Power, Art and Identity in Lebanese Armenia, 1945-2005

In this thesis, I analyze the history, culture, and power relations that characterize the Armenian population in Lebanon both internally and externally, through interactions with Lebanese society and with the larger post-Genocide Armenian Diaspora. Focusing on history, music, and film, and drawing on interviews conducted in Lebanon, my analysis aims to show how cultural forms draw on specific histories and experiences to spatially and temporally connect disparate diasporic groups worldwide. Specific attention will be given to selected “moments” that changed in some significant way these relationships or affected the development of the Diaspora in Lebanon. Ultimately, I seek to use the Diaspora, its social engagement, and its cultural production to illuminate the complexities of nationalism and history when applied to the Armenian context, and to dismantle some of the fundamental orthodoxies of nationalism and historiography.\ud Ebose‘15, Osazenoriuw