WebTalks
Aurora Mardiganian: Survivor, Witness, Activist
Marie-Aude Baronian
Baronian offers a portrait of Aurora as a pioneer and activist, a young woman whose mission to bear witness continues to resonate today.
Aurora Mardiganian: Survivor, Witness, Activist
Aurora Mardiganian, a witness and survivor of the Armenian Genocide, has become a figure of popular lore and projection over the years. Here, Dr. Baronian offers a portrait of Aurora as a pioneer and activist, a young woman who having survived the unimaginable violence of the Genocide wrote a memoir to tell her story and the story of her people, then went on to play her own role in a 1919 Hollywood production that became the first ever film to depict genocide. Baronian argues that Aurora’s mission is far from being closed and, moreover, that it compels us to think about the ways in which we can continue to tell the stories of survivors and to bear witness to atrocity.
