Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History

The Age of the Gharib: Strangers and Estrangement in the Pre-modern Mediterranean
2017-03-02 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | 220 Haines Hall
A lecture by Michael Pifer
National Endorsement for the Humanities Fellow
University of Michigan

The trope of the wandering stranger, the outcast with secret prestige, can be found in pre-modern literatures around the world. This lecture will shed light on an intersecting discourse about strangers across Jewish, Muslim, and Christian societies, with the intention of illuminating the peregrinations of the restless outcast known as the gharib in Middle Armenian poetry in particular. As it will argue, the mobile figure of the gharib, which performatively travels across multiple cultural systems, suggests an alternative manner of parsing what is ‘native’ and ‘foreign,’ indigenous and exogenous, in the societies through which it moves.
Co-sponsored by UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies

The City as Anthology: Visualizing Cultures of Literacy in Early Modern Isfahan
2017-04-06 14:00 - 17:00 | 6275 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
A lecture by Kathryn Babyan
Associate Professor of Iranian History & Culture, Director Armenian Studies Program
University of Michigan
Event Flyer
The City as Anthology will encapsulate the story of Isfahan through private collections assembled in the domestic sphere of urban households. Thousands of anthologies were produced in seventeenth century family libraries, shaping tastes and aesthetics as they participated in the making of a graphic culture. Paintings and drawings were commissioned and purchased; private letters, verses of poetry, and talismans, along with all sorts of fragments were arranged and recorded on paper. This talk will serve as a guide to my reading of these anthologies as an account of households and communities of literacy before print.
Co-sponsored by UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies

Contemporary Challenges in Human Rights
2017-04-17 | UCLA School of Law, 385 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
A Talk with Geoffrey Robertson, Q.C.

Abbot Mkhit‘ar of Sebastea: A Sacred Genius and an Enduring Challenge for Today
2017-09-24 13:30 - 15:00 | Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
A lecture by His Eminence, Archbishop Levon Zekiyan
Royce Hall 314, UCLA
Sunday, September 24, 2017, 1:30-3:00 PM
Event flyer in Armenian
Event flyer in English
A light lunch and refreshments will be served before the lecture. Talk will be given in Armenian and English.
This event is presented by The Richard Hovannisian Chair in Modern Armenian History with the co-sponsorship of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).

Dissent in an Age of Populism: Sustaining Political Opposition after Turkey's 2017 Referendum
2017-10-09 17:30 - 19:00 | UCLA School of Law, 385 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Garo Paylan
MP, Peoples’ Democratic Party, Member of the Parliamentary Committees on Constitution and Budget

UCLA School of Law, Room 1314
Monday, October 9, 2017, 5:30-7:00 PM
Event Flyer
This event is Co-Sponsored by the UCLA School of Law’s The Promise Institute for Human Rights, The Richard Hovannisian Chair in Modern Armenian History, and the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.

The King and the Forty Orphans: The Invention of an Armenian Homeland in Ethiopia
2017-10-12 18:30 - 20:00 | UCLA School of Law, 385 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
A Lecture by Boris Adjemian
Historian and Director of AGBU Nubar Library (Paris)

UCLA School of Law, Room 1420
Thursday, October 12, 2017, 6:30-8:00 PM
Event Flyer
This event is Co-Sponsored by The Richard Hovannisian Chair in Modern Armenian History, the UCLA African Studies Center, and the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.

Interculturalism and the Integration of Syrian-Armenian Refugees to Montreal, Quebec
2017-10-26 18:30 - 20:00 | CA
A Lecture by Gabriella Djerrahian
Concordia University, Montreal

UCLA School of Law, Room 1314
Thursday, October 26, 2017, 6:30-8:00 PM
Event Flyer
This event is Co-Sponsored by The Richard Hovannisian Chair in Modern Armenian History, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, and the UCLA School of Law Promise Institute for Human Rights.

Confessionalization and Reform: The Mkhit‘arist Enterprise from Constantinople to Venice, Trieste, and Vienna
2017-12-16 - 2017-12-17 | UCLA Faculty Center, California Room, 480 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
A Conference in memory of Father Sahak Djemjemian and on the Occasion of the 300th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Congregation in Venice
Event Flyer and Program Details
Event Videos

Marriage Law and Marriage Culture among Western Armenians, 1860-1908
2018-03-08 18:30 - 20:00 | CA
A Lecture by Dr. Hasmik Khalapyan

UCLA Haines Hall, Room A18
Thursday, March 8, 2018, 6:30-8:00 PM
Event Flyer
This event is Co-Sponsored by The Richard Hovannisian Chair in Modern Armenian History, and the UCLA Gustave von Grunebaum Center for Near East Studies

Sultan Abdulhamid II: Founding Father of the Turkish State?
2018-03-23 14:00 - 17:00 | 10383 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
A Lecture by Edhem Eldem
College de France
Event Podcast

Photography in the Ottoman Middle East & Beyond
2018-03-25 10:30 - 16:00 | Brand Library, 1601 West Mountain Street, Glendale, CA, 91201, United States
A Symposium Moderated by Dr. Armen T. Marsoobian
Co-Curator of Continuity and Rupture: An Armenian Family Odyssey

Event Videos

Voice Signatures: Recordings of Russian Armenian POWs in German Camps, 1916-1918
2018-05-10 18:00 - 19:30 | 1234 Public Policy, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90095
A Lecture by Melissa Bilal
University of Chicago
Event Flyer

William Saroyan: The Unpublished Plays in Performance
2018-10-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Jan Popper Theater, Schoenberg Hall, 445 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
A world premier Vista Players production created and directed by Aram Kouyoumdjian and performed by Jade Hykush, Will Maizel, Bailey Sorrel, and Robert Walters.
Event Flyer

Armeno-Iranica: A Shared History
2019-01-27 09:30 - 21:30 | Royce Hall 314, 405 Hilgard Avenue, los angeles, CA, 90095, United States
A Conference in Honor of Nina Garsoïan
Event Flyer and Program
Conference Co-Sponsor: The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)

Daily Life in the Abyss: Genocide Diaries, 1915-1918
2019-03-14 19:00 - 21:00 | 10383 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
Join us for this book talk as Vahé Tachjian recreates the quotidian world of deportees from Ayntab, ordinary lives caught in an extraordinary historical moment. Through analysis of diaries and other source material, the talk reconstructs the rhythms of daily life within an often bleak and hostile environment, in the face of a gradually disintegrating social fabric.
Event Flyer

Feast of Ashes: The Life and Art of David Ohannessian
2019-09-26 18:30 - 20:30 | 10383 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
Join us for this book talk as Sato Moughalian details the lineage of her grandfather David Ohannessian’s ceramic tradition and document the critical roles his deportation and his own agency played in its transfer—aspects of the story obscured in the art historical narrative. She will speak about the process of coming to terms with her family’s past, the ways in which that served as an impetus to excavate and reconstruct her grandfather’s history through archival research, and the importance of preserving the stories of peoples displaced through migration.
Event Flyer

"Diaspora and 'Stateless Power': Social Discipline and Identity Formation Across the Armenian Diaspora during the Long Twentieth Century"
2019-10-12 09:00 - 2019-10-13 17:15 | Rolfe Hall 1200, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
A Conference in Honor of Khachig Tölölyan
Event Program

Sponsored by:
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
The Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in
Modern Armenian History (UCLA)
The Narekatsi Chair in Armenian Studies (UCLA)
The Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair
(University of California, Irvine)
The Institute of Armenian Studies
(University of Southern California)
The Armenian Studies Program
(California State University, Fresno)
The Armenian Studies Program
(California State University, Northridge)
The National Association for Armenian Studies
and Research (Belmont, MA)
Armenian Bar Association

The Republics of the Caucasus, 1918-1920: A Failed Project of Interdependence
2019-11-26 12:00 - 13:30 | 10383 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
A Public Lecture by Beka Kobakhidze
Event Flyer

Cosponsored by:
UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies
UCLA Program on Central Asia
The Richard Hovannisian Chair in Modern Armenian History

The Politics of Armenian Migration to North America
2020-03-12 18:30 - 20:00 | 10383 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
This event has been postponed. (updated 3/11/2020, 5:00 pm)

Transforming Invisible Street Types into Subjects Worthy of Attention: The Intimate Portrait as Agent for Social Reform in Late Nineteenth Century Ottoman Armenian Realism
2020-04-03 18:30 - 20:00 | 10383 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States

Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide
2020-04-16 12:00 - 14:00 | 10383 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States

The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and its Unaccounted Lives
2020-04-17 18:30 - 20:30 | Royce Hall 314, 405 Hilgard Avenue, los angeles, CA, 90095, United States

Taner Akcam, Decision to Annihilate Armenians
2020-09-14 11:00 - 14:00 | Zoom Webinar
This event is free, but Registration is required. RSVP at bit.ly/3icR1In.

Ronald G. Suny, Armenians and the Wages of Nationalism
2021-02-12 11:00 - 14:00 | Zoom Webinar
This event is free, but registration is required. RSVP at bit.ly/PAI3Web.

The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and Its Unaccounted Lives
2021-04-22 11:00 - 13:00 | Zoom Webinar
The Inaugural Raymond H. Kévorkian Armenian Genocide Commemoration Lecture delivered by Dr. Harry Harootunian.
Harry Harootunian’s The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and its Unaccounted Lives is an attempt to reach an unattainable history by addressing the experience and memories of his parents, who escaped the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916 and migrated to the United States to confront the magnitude of a second challenge of adaptation and economic security in an entirely different environment. Their afterlives in Detroit, where they raised three children, were marked by a void of silence provoked by what they had experienced and the loss they had incurred to configure a daily life continually mediated by the defeating historical effects of genocidal policies Armenians had been subjected to during the closing years of Ottoman rule.
Born in 1929 in the United States, Harry Harootunian is among the leading professional historians of East Asia, focusing on Japan’s early modern and modern history. He is the author of Marx after Marx: History and Time after Capitalism (Columbia University Press, 2015) and Uneven Moments: Reflections on Japan’s Modern History (Columbia University Press, 2019). He was formerly the Max Palevsky Professor, Emeritus of History and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, the dean of Humanities at the University of California, Santa Cruz, editor of Journal for Asian Studies, and co-editor of Critical Inquiry. His newest book is The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and Its Unaccounted Lives.
*Please note that Todd Presner has replaced Michael Rothberg as the Discussant for this event.
Registration is required for this Webinar event.

You can watch a video of this event below:

I Am Servant of Your Voice: Armenian-American Soprano Zabelle Panosian, 1891-1986
2022-10-14 19:00 - 21:00 | 10383 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
The Armenian Studies Program within the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA presents “I am Servant of Your Voice: Armenian-American soprano Zabelle Panosian, 1891-1986” by musicologist and record producer Ian Nagoski and music collector and researcher Harout Arakelian. This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, and the UCLA Armenian Music Program.
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The event will take place at UCLA Bunche Hall, Room 10383
To attend the event virtually, via the Zoom Webinar platform RSVP here.

An Armenian Artist of Constantinople
2022-11-03 06:00 - 21:00 | Zoom Webinar
Webinar Registration

Armeno-Indica: Four Centuries of Familiarity and Friendship
2023-03-17 - 2023-03-18 | UCLA Royce Hall 314 and Fowler Museum
This event is organized by the UCLA Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History.
Friday, March 17, 2023 | 10:00 AM – 6:30 PM (Pacific Time)
to
Saturday, March 18, 2023 | 11:30 AM – 6:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Postponed due to the pandemic, this international conference celebrates the bicentenary of the founding of Kolkata’s famed Armenian College (est. 1821), one of three centers of Armenian higher learning in the diaspora during the nineteenth century and the only one that has survived and is thriving today. Bringing together economic, literary, legal, and cultural historians from India, Armenia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, the conference highlights how, beginning in the early modern period and continuing to the present, Armenians have traveled to India to make its distant shores and cultures their own. India looms large in the Armenian social imaginary. It was not only the place where the first Armenian proto-constitution for an “imagined” nation-republic was published (Madras 1788/9), it was also the cradle of the first Armenian newspaper (Madras, 1794-1796), the first modern Armenian play (Calcutta 1823), and arguably also where the first Eastern Armenian novel appeared (Calcutta, 1846), as well as where the first Armenian “feminist” tract (Calcutta, 1847) was published.
Gathering an international group of scholars, Armeno-Indica explores the Indo-Armenian saga in South Asia from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. Themes to be explored include the connected economic, literary, legal, and political histories of Armenians and Indians in South Asia and beyond across the waters of the Indian Ocean. The keynote for the conference will be delivered by Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam.

—– RSVP requested for in-person attendance —–
—– RSVP for participation via Zoom —–

Friday, March 17, 2023 (Royce 314, UCLA)
Welcoming words: Amy Landau and Ann Karagozian
(10:00 AM – 10:15 AM)
Introduction to the conference: Sebouh David Aslanian
(10:15 AM – 10:30 AM)
~~ Introduction and Welcome video recording ~~

Panel 1: Trade, Law, and Go-Betweens (10:30 AM – 12:30 PM)
Santanu Sengupta (Kolkata): “Negotiating with Law: Phases of Armenian Interaction with the Early Colonial Law Courts in India.”
Xabier Lamikiz (University of the Basque Country /Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU): “Armenian Merchants from Madras in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Manila: A Story of Love and Hate.”
Ruquia Hussain (Aligarh Muslim University, AMU): “Of Sarhad and Calcutta: The English East India Company, Khwāja Israel di Sarhad and the Foundation of Modern Calcutta.”
Sona Tajiryan (Gemological Institute of America, GIA): “How to Choose and Buy Pearls? An Eighteenth-Century Armenian Guide on the Pearl Trade in India (1730s).”
Discussant: Glenn Penny (UCLA)
~~ Panel 1 video recording ~~

Lunch Break: Balcony of Royce 306 (12:30 PM – 1:30 PM)

Panel 2: Language and Literary Revival (1:30 PM-3:00 PM)
Ahona Panda (Claremont McKenna): “Ajab Shahar Calcutta: The Outsider in the Bengal Renaissance.”
Talar Chahinian (University of California, Irvine): “Mobilizing Subjectivity in the Practice of the Nation: Tagheadeants‘s’ Case for Women’s Education.”
Peter Cowe (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA): “Intertextuality and Innovation: Mesrop Taghiadeants‘ and his Experimentation with the Novel Genre in Comparative Perspective.”
Discussant: Houri Berberian (University of California, Irvine)
~~ Panel 2 video recording ~~
Coffee Break: (3:00 PM – 3:15 PM)

Panel 3: Armenian Historiography and Print Culture in Madras (3:15-5:00PM)
Martin Adamian (UCLA, graduate student): “Mesrovb J. Seth, Father of Indo-Armenian Historiography.”
Anna Sirinian (Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà, Università di Bologna): “Azdarar (1794-1796): The First Armenian Periodical in the World.”
Hasmik Kirakosyan (Senior Researcher, Mashtots Repository of Manuscripts, Yerevan): “Harutiwn Shmavonean an Armenian Printer-publisher in Madras and a Farman for Printing in Arabic script in Madras.”
Discussant: Nile Green (UCLA)
~~ Panel 3 video recording ~~

Panel 4: History in the Present (5:00 PM – 6:30 PM)
Armen Arslanian: (Warden of the Armenian Church of Dhaka, Bangladesh): “The Armenian Church of Dhaka (Bangladesh) and the task of Heritage preservation.”
Vache Tadevosyan: (Community leader, Kolkata, India): “The Mardasirakan Jemaran (Armenian College of Kolkata) and its Bicentenary.”
Satenik Chookaszian (Armenian National Gallery in Yerevan): “Sargis Katchadourian’s reproductions of India’s cultural gems from the collection of National Gallery of Armenia.”
Chair and Discussant: Armen Baibourtian
~~ Panel 4 video recording ~~

Saturday, March 18, 2023 (Fowler Museum, UCLA)
Check-in at Lenart Hall (11:30 AM – 12:00 PM)
Welcoming remarks: Amy Landau

Panel 1: Monuments, Patronage, and Indo-Persianate Identities (12:00 PM – 2:00 PM)
Sebouh David Aslanian (Department of History, UCLA): “Cemeteries as Heterotopias: Armenian Sepulchral Culture in Agra and Surat, or what the Dead can tell us About the Living.”
Talinn Grigor (Department of Art History, UC Davis): “‘Transimperial’ Strategies of Artistic Patronage: From New Julfan Merchants to Parsi Industrialists.”
Veronika Zablotsky (Freie Universität, Berlin): “Orientalism and the Making of the Armenian Diasporic Imaginary in Early Colonial India.”
Discussant: Peter Cowe (UCLA)
~~ Day 2 Panel 1 video recording ~~
Panel 2: The Historical Imagination and the Circulation of Revolutionary Ideas in Late 18th Century South India (2:00 PM – 3:30PM)
Michael O’Sullivan (The European University Institute, Florence): “Portfolio Capitalism and History-Writing in Hagop Simonean Ayubeant’s Life of Haydar Ali Khan, c. 1782-1795.”
Ayal Amer (UC Irvine): “Fitna and Patriotism in Late 18th century Madras.”
Satenig Badwagan Toufanian (Inalco, Paris): “The Snare of Glory: A Call for Freedom from Madras.”
Discussant: Sebouh D. Aslanian
~~ Day 2 Panel 2 video recording ~~
Intermission: Lemonade, Cookies and Open Galleries in Courtyard (3:30 PM – 4:40 PM)

Keynote Address (4:40 PM – 5:40 PM)
Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Distinguished Professor & Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences): “Armenians and Others in Mughal Surat: Rethinking Communities, Collaboration and Conflict.”
~~ Day 2 Keynote address video recording ~~
Reception on the Terrace (6:00m – 7:30pm)

That Troublesome Word, Genocide: How Should We Understand It?
2023-04-21 16:00 - 18:00 | 6275 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
Please join us for the Raymond H. Kevorkian Annual Armenian Genocide Remembrance Lecture. This event will be held in person and virtually.
In-person: 6275 Bunche Hall, UCLA | Virtual: RSVP via bit.ly/MAH04-21-23
Australian historian and student of genocides, Professor Dirk Moses, recently published a bold and provocative challenge to political and military leaders, as well as the field of genocide studies — The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression (Cambridge University Press, 2021) — which questions the utility of the concept of genocide, analyzes its harmful effects, and proposes that an alternative concept, permanent security, be used as a more inclusive and effective analytic for crime against civilians. Genocide leaves too much out, for example, aerial bombing, and lets states, notably Western countries, off the hook by allowing arguments made from military necessity. Professor Ron Suny, emeritus of the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan — and author of a major study of the massacres and deportations committed by the Ottoman Turks in 1915, “They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton University Press, 2015) — uses the insights of Moses’ work to take a fresh look at the Armenian tragedy and how it provides another lens to look at the concept of genocide.

THE HORRORS OF ADANA: REVOLUTION AND VIOLENCE IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
2023-04-28 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
Please join Bedross Der Matossian, Ph.D., Professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for this Lecturer. This event will be held in person and via Zoom.
In-person: UCLA BUNCHE HALL 6275 | ZOOM WEBINAR RSVP at bit.ly/PAI4-28-23
