JOINED THE DEPARTMENT

2010

Bedross Der Matossian is a Professor of Modern Middle East History in the Department of History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Born and raised in Jerusalem, he is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he began his graduate studies in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. He completed his Ph.D. in Middle East History in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University in 2008. From 2008 to 2010, he was a Lecturer of Middle East History in the Faculty of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For the Spring quarter of 2014, he was appointed as the Dumanian Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. His areas of interest include ethnic politics in the Middle East, inter-ethnic violence in the Ottoman Empire, Palestinian history, and the history of the Armenian Genocide.

Currently, he is the vice-chair of the Department of History. He was the President of the Society for Armenian Studies (2018-2022). He serves on the Board of Directors of multiple international educational institutions and on the editorial board of multiple journals, the most prominent of which is the flagship journal of the field: International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES). He is also the series editor of Armenians in the Modern and Early Modern World published by I.B.Tauris, an imprint of Bloomsbury Press.

For more info see https://un-lincoln.academia.edu/BedrossDerMatossian.

CV

TEACHINGUndergraduate Courses

HIST 367 Modern Middle East History
HIST 379 U.S. & the Middle East
HIST 395/895 Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
HIST 450 Capstone Seminar: Crimes Against Humanity
HIST 121 The World Since 1500
HIST 120 The World to 1500
HIST 395H Honors Seminar: Race, Nation, and Genocides in the Modern World
HIST 254 Human Rights in Modern World History

Graduate Courses

HIST 961 Readings and Problems in World History
HIST 963 Readings and Problems in Non-Western History
HIST 963: Readings in Comparative World History: Comparative Settler Colonialism
HIST 901 Theory and Debate in History
HIST 900 Introduction to Historical Study
 

FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS

• College Outstanding Research and Creativity Award (ORCA) (2024)
• Layman Grant (2015-2016)
• Gulbenkian Post-Doctoral Short-Term Research Grant (2013)
• Charles Henry Oldfather Research Grant from the Department of History, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (2012-2013)
• Columbia University Fellowship (Clara and Krikor Zohrab Fellowships) 2007-2008
• Columbia University Fellowship (Clara and Krikor Zohrab Fellowships) 2006-2007
• Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Summer Fellowship 2006
• Middle East Institute Summer Fellowship 2006
• Columbia University Dissertation Writing Fellowship (Clara and Krikor Zohrab Fellowships) 2005-2006
• Middle East Institute Summer Fellowship, 2005
• GSAS Summer Fellowship, 2005 (The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The John W. Klug Endowment for a New Creation of Faculty Excellence)
• GSAS Summer Fellowship, 2004
• Gorvetzian Fellowship in Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Culture (2003-2004)
• Middle East Lang Fellowship, Columbia University, 2002

BOOKS

Bedross Der Matossian (ed.), The Armenian Social Democrat Hnchakian Party: Politics, Ideology and Transnational History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2023).

Bedross Der Matossian (ed.), Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2023).

Bedross Der Matossian, The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early 20th Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2022).

Bedross Der Matossian (ed.), The First Republic of Armenia (1918-1920) on its Centenary: Politics, Gender, and Diplomacy (Fresno, CA: The Press at Fresno State, 2020).

Bedross Der Matossian and Barlow Der Mugrdechian (eds.), Western Armenian in the 21st Century: Challenges and New Approaches (Fresno, CA: The Press at Fresno State, 2019).

Bedross Der Matossian, Sulaiman Mourad, and Naomi Koltun-Fromm (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Jerusalem (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2018).

Bedross Der Matossian, Parçalanan Devrim Düşleri: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun Son Döneminde Hürriyetten Şiddete (Istanbul: İletişim Publications, 2016) (Turkish translation of Shattered Dreams of Revolution).

Bedross Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2014) – Winner of the 2015 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies given by The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) Outstanding Book Award in 2017.

ARTICLES

• “Representing the 1909 Adana Massacres in Armeno-Turkish: Garabed Artinian and the Case for a Historical Reading” in International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, Vol. 8 (2023), 5-50.
• “The Ottoman Massacres of Armenians, 1894–1896 and 1909,” in Cambridge World History of Genocide, Vol. II, eds. Ned Backhawk, Ben Kiernan, Benjamin Madley, and Rebe Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2023), 609–33.
• “Impunity, Lack of Humanitarian Intervention, and International Apathy: The Blockade of the Lachin Corridor in Historical Perspective,” Genocide Studies International 15, 1 (Spring 2021): 7–20.
• “The Armeno-Turkish (Hayatar T’rk’eren) Language in the 19th Century: Marking and Crossing Ethno-Religious Boundaries,” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World (2019): 1-34.
• Bedross Der Matossian “From Genocide to Post-Genocide: Survival, Gender, and Politics,” in International Journal of Middle East Studies 51 (2019), 135–147.
• “The Armenians of Jerusalem in the Modern Period: The Rise and Decline of a Community,” in Bedross Der Matossian, Sulaiman Mourad, and Naomi Koltun-Fromm (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Jerusalem (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018), pp. 396-407.
• “Introduction” to the Hebrew translation of Henry Morgenthau’s Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story: A Personal Account of the Armenian Genocide (Haifa: Pardes Publishing, 2018), pp. 31-55.
• “Explaining the Unexplainable: Recent trends in the Armenian Genocide Historiography,” in Journal of Levantine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 Winter 2015.
• “19. Yüzyılda Osmanlı Ermeni Kenti Kesaria/Kayseri [The Ottoman Armenian City of Kayseri in the 19th Century],” in Altuğ Yılmaz, Ermeni ve Rum Kültür Varlıklarıyla Kayseri/Kayseri with its Armenian and Greek Cultural Heritage (İstanbul: Hrant Dink Vakfı Yayınları, 2016), pp.22-39.
• “Jön Türk Devrimi’nin Ardından Gayrimüslimlerin İdaresi ve ‘Kudüs Meselesi’,” in Yuval Ben-Bassat and Eyal Ginio (eds.), Jön Türklerin Filistini (Istanbul: Koç University Press, 2016).
• “Contending trends in the Armenian historiography of the Late Ottoman Empire: inclusion vs. exclusion,” in New Perspectives on Turkey / Volume 53 / November 2015, pp 174 – 180.
• “Yüzüncü Yıl Arifesinde Ermeni Soykırımı’nın Tarihyazımı: Süreklilikten Olumsallığa,” [The Armenian Genocide Historiography on the Eve of the Centennial: From Continuity to Contingency] in Praksis, Volume 39, Fall 2015.
• “Revolutionary Fallout: How the Young Turks went from Carnegie Hall to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire,” Stanford University Press Blog Series on Remembering the Armenian Genocide, May 20, 2015 (http://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2015/04/revolutionary-fallout-.html).
• “Ottoman Armenian Kesaria in the Nineteenth Century,” in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed. The Armenian Communities of Ceasarea (California: Mazda Publishers, 2014).
• “Arman Filastin 1918-1948,” in Majallat al-Dirasat Al-Filastinniya, Vol. 23, Issue. 92, Autumn, 2012, pp. 79-99.
• “The Development of Public Spheres among Armenians, Arabs, and Jews after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908,” in François Georgeon (dir.), L’Ivresse de la liberté : la révolution de 1908 dans l’Empire ottoman, Louvain, Peeters, 2012.
• “A Review Article: The ‘Definitiveness’ of Genocide and A Question of Genocide,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies. (2011): Vol. 20:2.
• “The Genocide Archives of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem,” in the Armenian Review, Vol. 52, No. 3-4, (Fall-Winter) 2011.
• “The Taboo within the Taboo: The Fate of ‘Armenian Capital’ at the End of the Ottoman Empire,” European Journal of Turkish Studies [Online], Complete List, 2011, Online since 06 October 2011., 2011. URL: http://ejts.revues.org/index4411.html.
• “The Armenians of Palestine 1918-1948,” Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XLI, No. 1 (Autumn 2011), 24-44.
• “From Bloodless Revolution to a Bloody Counter-revolution: The Adana Massacres of 1909,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2011, 152-173.
• “Administrating the Non-Muslims and ‘The Question of Jerusalem’ after the Young Turk Revolution,” in Eyal Ginio and Yuval Ben-Bassat (eds.), Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011).
• “The Young Turk Revolution: Its Impact on Religious Politics of Jerusalem (1908-1912),” Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue # 40, Spring 2010.
• “Looming Dangers, Turkey and Armenia: Opening Minds, Opening Borders: A Perilous Blueprint,” in Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 18:1, 2009.
• “The Pontic Armenian Communities in the Nineteenth Century,” in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed. Armenian Pontus: The Trebizond-Black Sea Communities (California: Mazda Publishers, 2008).
• “Venturing into the Minefield: Turkish Liberal Historiography and the Armenian Genocide,” in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2007).
• “The Armenian Commercial Houses and Merchant Networks in the 19th Century Ottoman Empire,” in TURCICA, Issue # 39, Fall 2007.

DIGITAL PROJECTS

Curator of Stanley E. Kerr Archives for the Zoryan Institute. Kerr was an American Relief Officer positioned in South Eastern Turkey (1919-1920). The project involved digitization and an in-depth analysis of the archival material by preparing a detailed catalogue of the collection. 

EXPERTISE

Middle East;
Islam;
World