Jaffa Panken
Ph.D. Student
jaffa@sas.upenn.edu
Education
B.A., Cornell University (2005), M.A. University of Pennsylvania (2007)
Research Interests
Late 19th/20th Century American History, gender and sexuality, U.S. and the World, history of medicine, social thought
COmmittee
Dissertation Topic
Dissertation Title: ‘Lest They Perish’: Americans and Armenian Humanitarian Relief, 1870-1927
Abstract:
n the early days of the Armenian Genocide that would take an estimated 1.2 million lives from 1915-1923, a handful of American diplomats and missionaries in Turkey witnessed the first genocidal acts of the deadly Twentieth Century. As Turkish censorship closed the borders around them, these firsthand accounts were secretly transmitted and publicized to the outside world. Operating beneath the watchful eyes of the Ottoman authorities, this network was instrumental in providing humanitarian aid to the surviving refugees until their exile in the wake of Turkey joining the Great War. At the other end of this pipeline stood the Near East Relief, a cabal of well-connected philanthropists and religious leaders whose emergent provision of funds later coalesced into an umbrella organization for all American humanitarian efforts in the Near East. As the desperation increased overseas, the Near East Relief began launching fundraising campaigns for Armenian Relief in 1917. Each year, the organization outdid itself in both spectacle and ambition until the crisis stabilized in the mid-1920s. Crafted meticulously by national and local committees, these publicity blitzes flourished with the emergence of a mass media culture during the Great War. By analyzing the evocative lithographs and photographs within the context of Near East Relief and other organizations’ publicity efforts, this project differentiates the media portrayal of the “Starving Armenians” from the variety of responses among Americans to the Armenian Genocide. While many historiographic accounts have assumed a uniformly pro-Armenian sentiment, I reevaluate such claims by relying upon the personal papers of relief workers, former missionaries, and diplomats enmeshed in the conflict. These documents reveal strong dissonance among Americans involved in Armenian relief efforts. Heroes to some and bigots to others, the open legacy of these first-line activists reorients the discourse on the Armenian Genocide away from political posturing and back to historical concerns of American humanitarianism and the culture of internationalism.
