Hybrid lecture by Dr. Hrag Papazian, Turpanjian Early Career Chair in Contemporary Armenian Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.

Thursday, May 7, 2026
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Tannas Alumni Suite (Engineering VI)

In recent decades, descendants of Armenians who were forced to convert to Islam during the Armenian Genocide and other periods of Ottoman and Turkish history have drawn increasing attention in both scholarly and public discourse. In this emerging discursive field, the labels “Islamized Armenians” and “hidden/crypto-Armenians” have become widely used terms for these descendants. This talk examines the logics and politics of naming at work in these classificatory practices, discussing the labels' (mis)uses, highlighting their analytical shortcomings and ethico-political pitfalls, and suggesting more nuanced ways of approaching this diverse and still vulnerable population.

Hrag Papazian is the Turpanjian Early Career Chair in Contemporary Armenian Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. His work examines subjectivities, meanings, and politics in post-genocide and post-conflict societies. His ethnographic research among Armenians in Turkey explores the construction, lived experience, and contestation of Armenianness across diverse trajectories, including Christian Armenians, Muslim and Alevi Armenians, and migrants from Armenia. He has also conducted research in Armenia, focusing on how Turkey and Turks are imagined in Armenian society and politics, particularly in the shadow of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Papazian holds a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford. He was a Promise Armenian Institute Postdoctoral Scholar at UCLA from 2021 to 2022.