What does it mean for a people to be transformed from indigenous inhabitants to foreigners in their own homeland? This lecture introduces the concept of “denativization” to examine how Armenians in Turkey underwent this transformation. Denativization extends beyond genocide and human rights violations, addressing the systemic erasure of Armenian presence, identity, and history. Through historical events, policies, and cultural shifts, the lecture illustrates how Armenians, once integral to Anatolia, were systematically marginalized and rendered alien in their ancestral land. Rather than viewing the Armenian genocide as a definitive endpoint, this approach highlights its enduring afterlives—showing how erasure and marginalization persist through erasures and historical denial in the present.

Hakem A. Al-Rustom is the Alex Manoogian Professor of Modern Armenian History, assistant professor of history and of anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is author of Enduring Erasures: Afterlives of the Armenian Genocide (forthcoming, July 2025) and the coeditor of Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (2010).