Visualizing a Life, Uprooted: An Interactive, Web-Map and Scroll-Driven Exploration of the Oral History of my Great-Grandfather – from Ottoman Cilicia to Lebanon and Beyond

Author

Alyssa Campbell, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

2-2024

Document Type

Capstone Project

Degree Name

M.S.

Program

Data Analysis & Visualization

Advisor

Ellie Frymire

Subject Categories

Arts and Humanities

Keywords

Armenian, refugee, displacement, genocide, socio-spatio-temporal, migration

Abstract

This project is an interactive data visualization narrative of the oral history of my great-grandfather, Hovsep Aghek Yeni-Komshian, born April 2, 1895 to an Armenian family in Kilis, Cilicia, Ottoman Empire.

Before World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, millions of Armenians lived throughout what is today Eastern Turkey, their nearly 3000-year history in the region making them one of the oldest indigenous groups of the area. However, today the Armenian presence in Anatolia has largely been erased due to the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923), during which nearly the entire local Armenian population was murdered or forcibly deported by Turkish officials, with a death toll of more than one million. Those who did manage to survive became the Armenian Diaspora, escaping to Syria, Lebanon, and beyond.

After fleeing Kilis, Hovsep spent the majority of his adult life in Beirut, Lebanon, where he met his wife Helen, raised five children, and practiced medicine for more than four decades until the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), which forced him to relocate, once again, to the United States at the age of 84. Between 1973 and 1983, Hovsep, with the support of his daughters, recorded an account of his life resulting in more than 50 pages of transcribed oral history.

This project explores Hovsep's life through his learnings, loves and losses. In the first part, data visualization and analysis with the support of Python's NLTK library are used to illustrate the main themes and sentiments of Hovsep's life. In the second part, an abridged version of Hovsep's oral history is presented through a visual narrative, in his own words, accompanied by photos from family albums and recent travels to Lebanon and Eastern Turkey.

Overall, this project uses a wide mix of data visualization and narrative techniques to engage the user in Hovsep’s story. It aims to contribute and build-upon existing methods to visualize socio-spatio-temporal data, specifically as it relates to the themes of forced migration and displacement.

Comments

Online component: https://atlasfolio.github.io/capstone/

Recommended Citation

Campbell, Alyssa, "Visualizing a Life, Uprooted: An Interactive, Web-Map and Scroll-Driven Exploration of the Oral History of my Great-Grandfather – from Ottoman Cilicia to Lebanon and Beyond" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5696