ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the gendered and racialized logics of domestic and international relations mediated representations of Ottoman Armenian refugees in early humanitarian discourse in Jim Crow America. Based on close readings of rarely considered archival materials and records, it critiques the “affecting appeal” as a narrative strategy by which humanitarian advocates framed Ottoman Armenian women and children as desirable and docile subjects of Western paternalism. Thirty years prior to the codification of crimes against humanity in international law, such appeals positioned the West as a moral court, extracted value from eyewitness testimonies in popular media, and deprived Ottoman Armenian survivors of political agency as seekers of justice in the aftermath of genocide.
