Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History

Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide
2020-04-16 12:00 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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
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

Looking Back Forward: Armenia in Lausanne - Nadir of Diplomacy
2024-04-22 10:00 - 12:00 | Zoom Webinar
Virtual lecture by Professor Hans-Lukas Kieser with discussant Lerna Ekmekcioglu.
RSVP at https://bit.ly/MAH04-22-24.
The annual Raymond Kevorkian Genocide Commemoration Lecture is organized by the Richard Hovannisian Chair of Modern Armenian History at UCLA, with co-sponsorship by the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA and the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES).

Sahag II Khabayan (1849-1939): Catholicos of Cilicia as Witness to Massacres and the Armenian Genocide
2025-04-25 13:00 - 15:00 | 6275 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
The talk examines the life and work of Sahag II Khabayan, the Catholicos of the House of Cilicia, as a lens through which to explore the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath. By reconstructing Khabayan’s biography through his correspondence, the talk will challenge traditional historiographies, prioritizing state archives-particularly Ottoman and German sources-over other significant historical records written in Armenian. It will emphasize the importance of Armenian survivor accounts, such as Khabayan’s letters, in understanding the complexities of the genocide and the efforts to preserve Armenian identity and survival in its wake.
Khabayan’s unique position as a political and religious leader during three critical phases of violence-the Adana massacres of 1909, the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923), and the Kemalist offensive (1918-1921) in Cilicia-offers a nuanced perspective on the events. The talk highlights three critical contradictions to traditional narratives: Khabayan’s loyalty to the Ottoman government during World War I, his relationship with Cemal Pasha (one of the key perpetrators of the genocide), and his post-war stance on the future of Armenians in Cilicia, which included critiques of the Armenian National Delegation’s reliance on European powers. Through Khabayan’s efforts to rebuild the Armenian community in Antelias, Lebanon, after the genocide, the talk will underscore his leadership in creating a sanctuary for Armenians and preserving their religious and cultural life. In doing so, the talk will expand the historiographical discourse on the Armenian Genocide, offering a more comprehensive understanding of survival, resistance, and the political realities faced by Armenians during and after this traumatic period.

You can watch a video of this event below:

Microhistories of Armenian Early Modernity, A UCLA Workshop on Diaspora, Print Culture, Confession Building, and Governmentality, c. 1512/1604-1789
2026-05-29 09:00 - 2026-05-30 16:00 | UCLA University Club, 480 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
MICROHISTORIES OF ARMENIAN EARLY MODERNITY
A UCLA Workshop on Diaspora, Print Culture, Confession Building, and Governmentality
UCLA University Club, Sequoia Room
May 29–30, 2026
Organized by the Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History
Co-Sponsored by the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History, The Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA, the UCLA Narekatsi Chair in Armenian Studies, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), and the Centre for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) at UCLA

To register for Zoom, please follow this link: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/98816914605

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DAY 1 — MAY 29, 2026
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Breakfast — 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Welcome & Opening Remarks — 10:00 AM – 10:10 AM
Sebouh D. Aslanian and Sona Tajiryan
Framing Address — 10:10 AM – 10:30 AM
Sebouh D. Aslanian
Through the Eye of a Needle: Global Microhistory and Armenian Early Modernity
PANEL I — THE MAGICAL WORLD OF ARMENIAN PRINT
10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Discussant: Dr. Sona Tajiryan
• Aram Ghoogasian (UCLA)
The Uses and Misuses of Early Modern Books, 1512–1800
• Anush Apresyan (Matenadaran-Mesrop Mashtots Research Institute)
The Mekhitarists’ Contribution to Early Modernity: Abbot Mekhitar in Armenian Old Printed Books
• Hratch Kestenian (Orient-Institut Beirut)
Making Medicine Legible: Mik‘ayēl Rēstēn Tēr-Petrosean and Early Modern Armenian Medical Print
Lunch Break — 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM
PANEL II — OBJECTS IN MOTION: MATERIALITY, POWER, AND PATRONAGE
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Discussant: Dr. Sebouh D. Aslanian (UCLA)
• Ani Margaryan (Soochow University)
Patronage, Materiality, and Identity: A Microhistorical Inquiry into Armenian Mercantile Networks through Objets d’Art
• Emma Harutyunyan (Harvard)
Liturgical Objects and the Construction of Patronal Identity
• Sona Tajiryan (Independent Researcher)
A Merchant’s Extraordinary Gem Portfolio: An Early Modern Phenomenon?
PANEL III — MOBILITY AND MEMORY IN PERIPHERAL AND URBAN SPACES AND LIVED EXPERIENCE
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Discussant: Dr. S. Peter Cowe (UCLA)
• Naira Poghosyan (Yerevan State University)
Armenians in the Ottoman Province: A Microhistorical Reading of Hakop Divrikts‘i’s Chronicle (1759–1783)
• Başak Yağmur Karaca (USC)
Diaspora in Built Form: Armenian Mobility and Commercial Buildings in Eighteenth-Century Intra-Muros Istanbul
• Haykuhi Muradyan (Yerevan State University)
A Microhistory of the Armenian Church of Dhaka (1781): Diaspora, Mobility, and Memory
Dinner (By Invitation Only) — 7:30 PM – 10:00 PM
At Professor Aslanian’s home
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DAY 2 — MAY 30, 2026
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PANEL IV — HISTORIES OR STORIES? WORDS AND LITERATURE AS WITNESSES TO INTERACTION, MIGRATION, AND IMAGINATION
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Discussant: Dr. Maran Momdjian (UCLA)
• Suman Pal (University of Calcutta)
Grigor Harutiunian in Eighteenth-Century Bengal: Diaspora and Historical Imagination
• Kristine Baghdasaryan (Pázmány Péter Catholic University / Free University of Berlin)
Armenian Words and Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Dede Qorqud Epic, c. 1512–1789
• Vera Sahakyan (Matenadaran-Mesrop Mashtots Research Institute)
Surviving Memory: Shah Abbas’s Deportations and the Transmission of Environmental Toponyms
Lunch Break — 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM
PANEL V — CONFESSIONALISM BETWEEN TEXT AND TRIBUNAL: VERNACULAR CULTURE, IMPOSTURE, AND THE LAW
1:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Discussant: Dr. Hagop Gulludjian (UCLA)
• Anna Ohanjanyan (Matenadaran Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts)
Confessional Mobility and Imposture: A Microhistory of an Armenian “False Priest” in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman World
• Sebouh D. Aslanian (UCLA)
Inquisitorial Ashkharhabar: Inventing Eastern Armenian in Confessional Manila, c 1740-1760
• Yavuz Aykan (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
From the Subject of Desire to the Subject of Law: Towards a Microhistory of Metropolitan Toros in Ottoman Trabzon, 1723
3:30 PM — Closing & Farewell
