Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. CAS Conference | Environmental Armenia: The Climate Crisis, Conflict, and Activism (October 6, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/85624 85624-21627801@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, October 6, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

Please register in advance for the webinars here: https://myumi.ch/2D2N9
You need just one registration to attend the three-day conference. After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the webinars.

As a global community, we are facing an undeniable climate crisis that “unequivocally” has been caused by human activity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that “every corner of the planet is already being affected and it could get far worse.” Armenia is no exception. This conference seeks to begin an interdisciplinary discussion inviting environmental scientists, geographers, policy experts, and activists to examine challenges posed by climate change and recurrent conflict, as well as present possible solutions through policy advocacy and local activism.

This three-day conference begins with a discussion of the environmental impact of war and violence, past and present, in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh moving to a broader discussion of the effects of the global climate crisis on Armenia’s land, water, and other natural resources. The participants will discuss the issues, challenges, and current policies that seek to mitigate the problems.

Schedule

October 6, 2021
12-1:30 PM | Armenia's Climate Crisis: Challenges & Opportunities
Dr. Irina Ghaplanyan, political scientist, climate negotiator, and former Deputy Minister of the Environment of the Republic of Armenia.

October 7, 2021
12-1:30 PM | Landscapes of War: The Impact of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict on the Environment and its Human and Non-Human Inhabitants Past and Present

“Investigating the Environmental Dimensions of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict”
Dr. Eoghan Darbyshire, researcher, Conflict and Environment Observatory.

“Weaponizing the Environment: The Silencing of the Nagorno-Karabakh’s Impact on the Landscape and its Human and Non-Human Inhabitants”
Mariam Yeghiazaryan, independent journalist and filmmaker.

October 8, 2021
11 AM-12 PM | Environmental Activism in Armenia: From Forests to Land to Water
Ruben Khachatryan, Director of Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets and JeanMarie Papelian, Executive Director of Armenia Tree Project.

12:30-2 PM | Screening of Eco-Patrol #1 and discussion with Mari Chakryan, President of Public Awareness and Monitoring Centre NGO and activists Tigran Ayvazyan, Levon Harutyunyan, and Ani Khachikyan.

*Cosponsored by the Donia Human Rights Center, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Program in the Environment, School for Environment and Sustainability.*

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

Photo by Mariam Yeghiazaryan.

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Livestream / Virtual Fri, 24 Sep 2021 15:37:38 -0400 2021-10-06T12:00:00-04:00 2021-10-06T13:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Armenian Studies Livestream / Virtual Photo by Mariam Yeghiazaryan.
CAS Conference | Environmental Armenia: The Climate Crisis, Conflict, and Activism (October 7, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/85624 85624-21627802@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 7, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

Please register in advance for the webinars here: https://myumi.ch/2D2N9
You need just one registration to attend the three-day conference. After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the webinars.

As a global community, we are facing an undeniable climate crisis that “unequivocally” has been caused by human activity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that “every corner of the planet is already being affected and it could get far worse.” Armenia is no exception. This conference seeks to begin an interdisciplinary discussion inviting environmental scientists, geographers, policy experts, and activists to examine challenges posed by climate change and recurrent conflict, as well as present possible solutions through policy advocacy and local activism.

This three-day conference begins with a discussion of the environmental impact of war and violence, past and present, in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh moving to a broader discussion of the effects of the global climate crisis on Armenia’s land, water, and other natural resources. The participants will discuss the issues, challenges, and current policies that seek to mitigate the problems.

Schedule

October 6, 2021
12-1:30 PM | Armenia's Climate Crisis: Challenges & Opportunities
Dr. Irina Ghaplanyan, political scientist, climate negotiator, and former Deputy Minister of the Environment of the Republic of Armenia.

October 7, 2021
12-1:30 PM | Landscapes of War: The Impact of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict on the Environment and its Human and Non-Human Inhabitants Past and Present

“Investigating the Environmental Dimensions of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict”
Dr. Eoghan Darbyshire, researcher, Conflict and Environment Observatory.

“Weaponizing the Environment: The Silencing of the Nagorno-Karabakh’s Impact on the Landscape and its Human and Non-Human Inhabitants”
Mariam Yeghiazaryan, independent journalist and filmmaker.

October 8, 2021
11 AM-12 PM | Environmental Activism in Armenia: From Forests to Land to Water
Ruben Khachatryan, Director of Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets and JeanMarie Papelian, Executive Director of Armenia Tree Project.

12:30-2 PM | Screening of Eco-Patrol #1 and discussion with Mari Chakryan, President of Public Awareness and Monitoring Centre NGO and activists Tigran Ayvazyan, Levon Harutyunyan, and Ani Khachikyan.

*Cosponsored by the Donia Human Rights Center, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Program in the Environment, School for Environment and Sustainability.*

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

Photo by Mariam Yeghiazaryan.

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Livestream / Virtual Fri, 24 Sep 2021 15:37:38 -0400 2021-10-07T12:00:00-04:00 2021-10-07T13:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Armenian Studies Livestream / Virtual Photo by Mariam Yeghiazaryan.
CAS Conference | Environmental Armenia: The Climate Crisis, Conflict, and Activism (October 8, 2021 11:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/85624 85624-21627803@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 8, 2021 11:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

Please register in advance for the webinars here: https://myumi.ch/2D2N9
You need just one registration to attend the three-day conference. After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the webinars.

As a global community, we are facing an undeniable climate crisis that “unequivocally” has been caused by human activity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that “every corner of the planet is already being affected and it could get far worse.” Armenia is no exception. This conference seeks to begin an interdisciplinary discussion inviting environmental scientists, geographers, policy experts, and activists to examine challenges posed by climate change and recurrent conflict, as well as present possible solutions through policy advocacy and local activism.

This three-day conference begins with a discussion of the environmental impact of war and violence, past and present, in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh moving to a broader discussion of the effects of the global climate crisis on Armenia’s land, water, and other natural resources. The participants will discuss the issues, challenges, and current policies that seek to mitigate the problems.

Schedule

October 6, 2021
12-1:30 PM | Armenia's Climate Crisis: Challenges & Opportunities
Dr. Irina Ghaplanyan, political scientist, climate negotiator, and former Deputy Minister of the Environment of the Republic of Armenia.

October 7, 2021
12-1:30 PM | Landscapes of War: The Impact of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict on the Environment and its Human and Non-Human Inhabitants Past and Present

“Investigating the Environmental Dimensions of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict”
Dr. Eoghan Darbyshire, researcher, Conflict and Environment Observatory.

“Weaponizing the Environment: The Silencing of the Nagorno-Karabakh’s Impact on the Landscape and its Human and Non-Human Inhabitants”
Mariam Yeghiazaryan, independent journalist and filmmaker.

October 8, 2021
11 AM-12 PM | Environmental Activism in Armenia: From Forests to Land to Water
Ruben Khachatryan, Director of Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets and JeanMarie Papelian, Executive Director of Armenia Tree Project.

12:30-2 PM | Screening of Eco-Patrol #1 and discussion with Mari Chakryan, President of Public Awareness and Monitoring Centre NGO and activists Tigran Ayvazyan, Levon Harutyunyan, and Ani Khachikyan.

*Cosponsored by the Donia Human Rights Center, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Program in the Environment, School for Environment and Sustainability.*

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

Photo by Mariam Yeghiazaryan.

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Livestream / Virtual Fri, 24 Sep 2021 15:37:38 -0400 2021-10-08T11:00:00-04:00 2021-10-08T14:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Armenian Studies Livestream / Virtual Photo by Mariam Yeghiazaryan.
CAS Lecture | Toward a Theorization of Nested Memory (January 12, 2022 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/89941 89941-21666536@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 5:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

Participate virtually by registering in advance for the webinar: https://myumi.ch/J8WE8

After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the webinar.

In Armenian Studies, most of the scholarship that we can categorize under the fields of trauma studies and memory studies has focused on the Armenian Genocide. What happens, though, when we recognize that inheritors of traumatic cultural memory can also be witnesses to succeeding events of collective violence? Listen to the testimonies of Armenian communities who remained in their ancestral homeland and those in the diaspora and you will likely find that phenomenon of narration.

Analyzing examples from Armenian American, Palestinian American, and American Indian literary canons, this presentation proffers the rubric of what Dr. Makhdoumian calls “nested memory.” Through this contrapuntal approach, she illuminates depictions of inherited memories of removal that are nested into collective memories of succeeding experiences of upheaval and displacement. Dr. Makhdoumian works in this manner of juxtaposition to build theoretical nuance and to make legible rather than erase the tensions that are raised when we bring together the afterlives of structural violence in different geopolitical sites. This approach allows her to articulate the overlapping but also distinct methodological aims of the study of the migration of memory, memory and migration, and the memory of migration.

Helen Makhdoumian received her PhD in English from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, Makhdoumian also earned a minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies as well as certificates through the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies (HGMS) and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. From 2015-18, she co-organized the Future of Trauma and Memory Studies, an interdisciplinary graduate student and faculty member reading group on campus. She regularly contributed to Days and Memory, the HGMS blog, and her articles have appeared in Modern Fiction Studies, Studies in American Indian Literatures, and the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies. In addition to teaching literature and composition courses at the University of Illinois, Dr. Makhdoumian held administrative appointments as a Peer Mentor for New Instructors, Digital Literacies Coordinator, and an Assistant Director of the Undergraduate Rhetoric Program as well as an assistant director of the campus writing center.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Thu, 06 Jan 2022 15:46:54 -0500 2022-01-12T17:00:00-05:00 2022-01-12T18:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion Helen Makhdoumian, 2021-22 Manoogian Postdoctoral Fellow
CAS Artist Spotlight Stories | Diana Kardumyan and her Short Films (“Tombe” and “Dialogues”) (January 26, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/89942 89942-21666537@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, January 26, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

VIRTUAL EVENT

Please register in advance to receive the streaming links and attend the Q/A session with the film director: https://myumi.ch/G1Wq7

After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the webinar.

In the confirmation email, please make sure to follow the links located right below the event date/time and webinar ID section and watch TOMBÉ and DIALOGUES on your own before January 26.

Diana Kardumyan studied film directing at the Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Cinema in Armenia. She participated in different film festivals, workshops, and master classes as a film director and producer. She also served as pre-selection and jury member at international film festivals.

TOMBÉ (2018)
Kara works in the «Goldfish» eatery all day long washing dishes. Her life has become a closed circle of gray days far from the colors of the big city. Every day she walks home alone at night to save money for her family. But one night an unexpected incident changes her evening routine.

DIALOGUES (2013)
Yerevan turns beautiful when, under its nocturnal embrace, two lovers meet once again. What difference can a single cool summer night, a brief encounter, and an incomplete conversation bring to their lives...?

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Livestream / Virtual Thu, 13 Jan 2022 14:47:07 -0500 2022-01-26T12:00:00-05:00 2022-01-26T13:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Center for Armenian Studies Livestream / Virtual Diana Kardumyan, artist and filmmaker
CAS Workshop (Day 1) | Dispossession and Its Legacies: Comparisons, Intersections, and Connections (February 10, 2022 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/90354 90354-21670448@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, February 10, 2022 5:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

VIRTUAL EVENT

Register in advance for the webinars. You need one registration to attend the two-day workshop: https://myumi.ch/kyyx2.

After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the workshops.

Download the workshop program: https://myumi.ch/n8yJk

Visit the workshop website: https://myumi.ch/Nm6RM

This workshop focuses on the historical instances and aesthetic representations of dispossession, its violence, and its persisting legacies in the former Ottoman Empire and its diasporas. The organizers hope to bring Ottoman, Middle Eastern, and Armenian studies into conversation with settler colonial studies, critical Indigenous studies, and global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Invoking dispossession as a point of comparison and the framework for the discussion, the workshop joins recent work in Armenian studies and Ottoman studies, which has begun to explore chains of displacement and dispossession under conditions of what some have called internal colonization (Üngör and Polatel; Bloxham). The aim is to put these works into conversation with the distinct yet inseparable fields of settler colonial and Indigenous studies, and ask how they might inform, learn from, and complicate understandings of territorial removal, the settler/native binary, and Indigenous transnationalisms.

The two panels work towards an expansive understanding of dispossession. The first panel, “Displacement and Dispossession in the Late Ottoman Empire,” explores waves of displacement and the creation and seizure of property. It takes up the influx of Muslim refugees into Ottoman domains, the connected dispossessions of the Hamidian Massacres and Armenian Genocide, shifting property regimes in the Ottoman Mashriq, and famine and dispossession in the Ottoman East.

The second panel, “Memory, Narrative, and Aesthetic Form,” takes up representations of dispossession and its legacies, with a focus on film, literature, and testimony. It features analyses of a film on the silences of a Greek Orthodox woman dispossessed from the Black Sea region in 1916, of settlement and state memory work in an Armenian American and American Indian novel, and of lived memory practices pertaining to the 1915 Armenian and 1994 Rwandan genocides.

The workshop concludes with a roundtable discussion on dispossession, memory, settler colonial studies, and indigeneity in Ottoman and Armenian studies. In it, panelists reflect on how these concepts have factored or could factor into their work, and how these frameworks, largely rooted in other fields, might speak to the Middle East and Anatolia.

Co-sponsors: Department of American Culture, Department of English Language & Literature, Department of History, Donia Human Rights Center, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Department of Sociology, and Society for Armenian Studies.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

Image credit: Commercial chart, World. George Philip & Son, Ltd. The London Geographical Institute. Philips' Mercantile Marine Atlas. Second Edition, 1905. Courtesy of Stanford Libraries David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 08 Feb 2022 08:35:10 -0500 2022-02-10T17:00:00-05:00 2022-02-10T19:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Center for Armenian Studies Workshop / Seminar Image credit: Commercial chart, World. George Philip & Son, Ltd. The London Geographical Institute. Philips' Mercantile Marine Atlas. Second Edition, 1905. Courtesy of Stanford Libraries David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.
CAS Workshop (Day 2) | Dispossession and Its Legacies: Comparisons, Intersections, and Connections (February 11, 2022 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/90397 90397-21670699@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 11, 2022 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

VIRTUAL EVENT

Register in advance for the webinars. You need one registration to attend the two-day workshop: https://myumi.ch/kyyx2.

After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the workshops.

Download the workshop program: https://myumi.ch/n8yJk

Visit the workshop website: https://myumi.ch/Nm6RM

This workshop focuses on the historical instances and aesthetic representations of dispossession, its violence, and its persisting legacies in the former Ottoman Empire and its diasporas. The organizers hope to bring Ottoman, Middle Eastern, and Armenian studies into conversation with settler colonial studies, critical Indigenous studies, and global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Invoking dispossession as a point of comparison and the framework for the discussion, the workshop joins recent work in Armenian studies and Ottoman studies, which has begun to explore chains of displacement and dispossession under conditions of what some have called internal colonization (Üngör and Polatel; Bloxham). The aim is to put these works into conversation with the distinct yet inseparable fields of settler colonial and Indigenous studies, and ask how they might inform, learn from, and complicate understandings of territorial removal, the settler/native binary, and Indigenous transnationalisms.

The two panels work towards an expansive understanding of dispossession. The first panel, “Displacement and Dispossession in the Late Ottoman Empire,” explores waves of displacement and the creation and seizure of property. It takes up the influx of Muslim refugees into Ottoman domains, the connected dispossessions of the Hamidian Massacres and Armenian Genocide, shifting property regimes in the Ottoman Mashriq, and famine and dispossession in the Ottoman East.

The second panel, “Memory, Narrative, and Aesthetic Form,” takes up representations of dispossession and its legacies, with a focus on film, literature, and testimony. It features analyses of a film on the silences of a Greek Orthodox woman dispossessed from the Black Sea region in 1916, of settlement and state memory work in an Armenian American and American Indian novel, and of lived memory practices pertaining to the 1915 Armenian and 1994 Rwandan genocides.

The workshop concludes with a roundtable discussion on dispossession, memory, settler colonial studies, and indigeneity in Ottoman and Armenian studies. In it, panelists reflect on how these concepts have factored or could factor into their work, and how these frameworks, largely rooted in other fields, might speak to the Middle East and Anatolia.

Co-sponsors: Department of American Culture, Department of English Language & Literature, Department of History, Donia Human Rights Center, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Department of Sociology, and Society for Armenian Studies.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

Image credit: Commercial chart, World. George Philip & Son, Ltd. The London Geographical Institute. Philips' Mercantile Marine Atlas. Second Edition, 1905. Courtesy of Stanford Libraries David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 08 Feb 2022 08:36:22 -0500 2022-02-11T10:00:00-05:00 2022-02-11T18:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Center for Armenian Studies Workshop / Seminar Image credit: Commercial chart, World. George Philip & Son, Ltd. The London Geographical Institute. Philips' Mercantile Marine Atlas. Second Edition, 1905. Courtesy of Stanford Libraries David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.
CAS Film Screening and Discussion | Contrapuntal Montage in the Films of Artavazd Peleshian (February 23, 2022 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/90398 90398-21670700@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, February 23, 2022 5:00pm
Location: Rackham Graduate School (Horace H.)
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL EVENT

Amphitheatre, 4th Floor
Rackham Graduate School
915 E. Washington Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Or participate virtually by registering in advance for the webinar: https://myumi.ch/mxx7w

After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the webinar.

Virtual participants will be able to join the lecture at 5:30 PM, after the in-person screening of the film "The Seasons" (1975).

In 1971, the Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Peleshyan, who had already established a name for himself with found footage films such as “The Beginning” (1967) and “We” (1969), articulated his theory of contrapuntal montage in the short programmatic text “Montage-at-a-Distance, or: A Theory of Distance”. Building on the tradition of earlier Soviet directors such as Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, Peleshyan postulated a form of montage that could create contrapuntal effects, not only when juxtaposed, but also at a distance from each other, through the use of formal repetitions and variations.

This talk gives an overview of Peleshyan’s theory of montage, and how it has been applied in films whose themes have ranged from the history of the Russian revolution (“The Beginning”), to Armenian national self-conscious (“We”), the space race (“Our Century,” 1982) and, in his most recent work, finished in 2021 after a three-decade hiatus from filmmaking, humanity’s relationship with the natural environment (“La Nature”). Additionally, the diverse influences that Peleshyan’s reinvigoration of the practice of cinematic montage has had on other filmmakers – notably Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker – will be explored.

Daniel Fairfax is assistant professor in film studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. He has recently published a two-volume history of the French film journal Cahiers du cinéma’s Marxist period, “The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973)” (Amsterdam University Press, 2021).

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Film Screening Tue, 04 Jan 2022 10:09:27 -0500 2022-02-23T17:00:00-05:00 2022-02-23T19:00:00-05:00 Rackham Graduate School (Horace H.) Center for Armenian Studies Film Screening Daniel Fairfax, Assistant Professor in Film Studies, Goethe Universität-Frankfurt
Celebrating Forty Years of Armenian Studies | Armenian Transformations, 1981-2021: How Forty Years of Michigan Armenian Studies Looked at Imperial Collapse, Ethnic War, and the Rebirth of Independence (March 11, 2022 5:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/92133 92133-21687046@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 11, 2022 5:30pm
Location: Michigan League
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

Please find the complete conference program here: https://myumi.ch/kyPn9

IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL EVENT

Hussey Room, 2nd Floor, Michigan League
911 North University Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109 United States

Participate virtually by registering in advance for the webinar: https://myumi.ch/M96g3

From the creation of the Alex Manoogian Chair in Modern Armenian History in 1981 to the catastrophic defeat of the Armenian Republic in the second Nagorno-Karabakh war, scholars at the University of Michigan have been in the vanguard of examining and attempting to understand the experiences of Armenians in modern times. When the chair was established, Armenia was a small Soviet republic, and half of the world's Armenians lived in scattered diasporic communities. Within a decade the Soviet empire had disintegrated, and Armenia became an independent state beset by hostile neighbors. The republic survived despite losses of population and economic distress. A thriving civil society defied the rule of oligarchs and self-serving politicians, and in 2018 crowds marched to the capital to make a democratic revolution. Just as they rebounded from genocide more than 100 years ago, Armenians once again must deal with loss and find a path to renewal.

Examining the recent past of Armenians in the homeland and in the diaspora, three Manoogian chairholders – Ronald Grigor Suny, Gerard Libaridian, and Hakem Al-Rustom – will present short talks on the turbulent events of the last four decades.

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It”
Gerard Libaridian, Professor Emeritus; former Alex Manoogian Professor in Modern Armenian History (2001-12), University of Michigan

“The Making of Modern Armenia: From Soviet Republic to Precarious Present”
Ronald Grigor Suny, William H. Sewell Jr Distinguished University Professor of History; former Alex Manoogian Professor in Modern Armenian History (1981-97), University of Michigan

“Living in the Future of the Armenian Catastrophe”
Hakem Al-Rustom, Alex Manoogian Professor of Modern Armenian History, University of Michigan

The evening will conclude with a musical offering by award-winning flutist, artistic director, and author Sato Moughalian and pianist and composer Thomas Jennings. The program includes arrangements of pieces by composer and ethnomusicologist Grikor Mirzaian Suni (1876-1939), grandfather of Ronald Grigor Suny.

*Cosponsored by Perspectives Ensemble and the Jarvis & Constance Family Foundation's Danièle Doctorow Prize; Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies; Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia.*

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Conference / Symposium Thu, 10 Mar 2022 15:06:53 -0500 2022-03-11T17:30:00-05:00 2022-03-11T19:30:00-05:00 Michigan League Center for Armenian Studies Conference / Symposium Celebrating Forty Years of Armenian Studies | Armenian Transformations, 1981-2021: How Forty Years of Michigan Armenian Studies Looked at Imperial Collapse, Ethnic War, and the Rebirth of Independence
CAS Conference | A Hit Parade of Historical Turns: From A Russian Perspective (March 12, 2022 9:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/92135 92135-21687047@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, March 12, 2022 9:30am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

Please find the complete conference program here: https://myumi.ch/kyPn9

IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL EVENT

Room 1010, Weiser Hall
500 Church Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Participate virtually by registering in advance for the webinar: https://myumi.ch/RWmn5

Over the last fifty years, the historical profession has undergone a profound transformation. Animated by political changes and new theories from outside the discipline, historians have repeatedly broadened the scope of their inquiries and “turned” to culture, language, emotions, and other novel categories for understanding the past. The field of Russian/Soviet history, born in the polarized era of the Cold War, has adapted and responded to each of these successive turns.

This one-day conference offers an overview of the development of the Russian/Soviet history field through critical engagement with some of the most original and methodologically exciting turning points. Each panel centers on a different thematic area or methodological approach, with a key text suggested for discussion. The conference schedule roughly follows the chronological trajectory of Ronald G. Suny’s oeuvre: from his earliest studies on the social history of the October Revolution, through his engagement with the cultural turn of the 1980s-90s and focus on non-Russian nationalities within the USSR, and finally to more recent work on empire and affect. Panelists will provide an assessment of Suny’s contributions in these areas, as well as personal reflections on how these historiographic turns have influenced their own lives and intellectual projects.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Conference / Symposium Thu, 10 Mar 2022 15:07:15 -0500 2022-03-12T09:30:00-05:00 2022-03-12T17:30:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Conference / Symposium CAS Conference | A Hit Parade of Historical Turns: From A Russian Perspective
CAS Lecture | Shaping the Landscape or Invisible Landscapes? Some Medieval Armenian Monastic Complexes between Past and Present (March 16, 2022 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/90399 90399-21670701@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, March 16, 2022 5:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL EVENT

Room 555, Weiser Hall
500 Church Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Or participate virtually by registering in advance for the webinar: https://myumi.ch/z119W

After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the webinar.

This talk discusses the significance of medieval Armenian coenobitic monasticism in the shaping of medieval landscapes and identities, as well as looks into the present-day destruction of this cultural heritage and the creation of ‘invisible landscapes’ as a strategy of obliterating the memory of the Armenian presence and part of this identity. Dr. Pogossian will start by introducing the first period of the flourishing of coenobitic monasticism in Medieval Armenia from the 9th to the 11th centuries and explore this religious-cultural phenomenon in light of historical-political processes taking place at this time. She will present the connection between changes in the dynastic system of Armenia of this period and the foundation and diffusion of monasteries supported by the very same princes or kings who were the primary agents of this process.

Pogossian suggests that the expansion of certain noble families (nakharars) into new territories, or the efforts of certain branches within an extended family to highlight their presence in a specific area, were paralleled by the establishment, re-establishment, and patronage of coenobitic monastic complexes by these élites. This is particularly evident in the case of the Bagratids, Artsrunis, and Syunis. Sources allow us to trace the various strategies adopted by some princes/kings for controlling newly acquired territories or consolidating their presence in other long-held lands. These strategies included the shaping of the landscape and inscribing a given noble family’s or its specific member’s presence therein via such massive landmarks requiring major investments as monastic complexes, among others. The monasteries and the saints to whom they were dedicated, not least some holy relics, also became crucial identity markers. Some of these markers were mobile. When a great number of Armenian princes and their following migrated to the Byzantine Empire in the 11th century, they often took with them such tangible or intangible identity markers as the devotion to a certain saint or his/her relics to Cappadocia and, subsequently, to Cilicia. Others, however, were by their very nature immovable and were meant to perpetrate the memory of their founders and of the Armenian presence on the landscape ‘forever’. Yet, it was this desired permanence that unfortunately could spell the demise of these monuments with a concomitant destruction of that memory.

The lecture will then close by looking into the modern and contemporary phenomenon of shaping the landscape yet once more by rendering it ‘invisible’ and what one may do to contest this phenomenon.

Zaroui Pogossian is a specialist in medieval Armenian history, culture, and religion, especially in relation to other peoples, cultures, and religions in the Near East and Asia Minor. She is Associate Professor of Byzantine Civilization at the University of Florence, and the PI of the ERC Project ArmEn: Armenia Entangled: Connectivity and Cultural Encounters in Medieval Eurasia 9th-14th Centuries (Consolidator Grant). In her research, Dr. Pogossian has explored such diverse topics as female asceticism and ascetic communities in early Christian Armenia, the role of women in the spread of Christianity in Armenia, monastic establishments, and territory control, as well as monasteries in an inter-religious perspective. She has contributed significantly to the study of apocalyptic traditions in Armenia, especially between the 11th and 13th centuries, including a focus on inter-religious polemic hidden in these texts.

Her critical edition, with comments and a thorough historical study of Agat‘angel, “On the End of the World,” an anonymous Armenian apocalyptic text, is forthcoming. Pogossian is the author of a book acclaimed by reviewers, "The Letter of Love and Concord" (Brill, 2011), as well as numerous articles and book reviews. She has been the recipient of several prestigious fellowships, such as from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (University of Tübingen), Käte Hamburger Collegium at the Center for Religious Studies: Study of the Dynamics in the History of Religions (University of Bochum) and the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities: Fate, Freedom and Prognostication - Strategies for Coping with the Future in East Asia and Europe (University of Erlangen). She is on the editorial board of the online journal Entangled Religions and is one of the co-founders and general editors of a book series Eastern Christia Cultures in Contact (Brepols editors).

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 19 Jan 2022 14:39:56 -0500 2022-03-16T17:00:00-04:00 2022-03-16T18:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion Zaroui Pogossian, Associate Professor of Byzantine Civilization, University of Florence
Screening of “Auction of Souls” & 2022 Dr. Berj H. Haidostian Annual Distinguished Lecture | Performing the Archive: A Conversation on Art, Engagement, and Armenianness (April 7, 2022 7:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/93489 93489-21705060@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, April 7, 2022 7:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

IN-PERSON EVENT

Full conference details available at: https://myumi.ch/7e2xr

State Theatre | Theater 2, 233 South State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Free and open to the public. No pre-registration or reservation required.

Auction of Souls
Performing Memory by and with Arsinée Khanjian

With Elmira Bahrami, Taner Şahintürk and Jesse Jonas Kracht

In 1918, "Ravished Armenia," the eyewitness account of then 18-year-old Aurora Mardiganian, which relentlessly described her ordeal through the massacre of the Armenians, triggered a wave of shock. Only a handful of scenes and the script have survived from the film version that was created in 1919 with Aurora in the leading role. The copies disappeared just like Aurora, who died penniless and forgotten in Los Angeles at 92 years old. Arsinée Khanjian reconstructs the story of a desperate attempt to relate the indescribable.

Arsinée Khanjian aims not only to pay homage to her but also to re-construct her life story based on archival materials while interrogating the artistic means to do so. By referring to Mardiganian’s memoirs, Khanjian questions the afterlife and the meaning of Aurora’s female body and image in the present day through a wide range of artistic and media devices (e.g. cinema, theater, dance). For the 2022 Dr. Berj H. Haidostian Distinguished Lecture Arsinée Khanjian, in conversation with scholar Marie-Aude Baronian, will discuss the genesis of “Performing Memory” and its various interpretative layers. They will also reflect upon broader issues such as the links between archives and memory, between art and political engagement, or between performance and Armenianness. Ultimately, this talk will stress the necessity of elaborating and including artistic practices in Armenian studies.

Arsinée Khanjian is a Canadian-Armenian-Lebanese actress, performer, producer, and civil rights activist. Throughout her career as an artist, she has extensively worked with her partner, Canadian-Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, and she collaborated with numerous international filmmakers such as, a.o., Michael Haneke, Catherine Breillat, the Taviani brothers, Olivier Assayas, and Fatih Akin. Khanjian is also actively involved in several artistic and community groups: she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Zoryan Institute for International Genocide and Human Rights Studies, of Canada’s leading contemporary art gallery The Power Plant, and was Co-Chair of the renowned Canadian contemporary dance company, Dancemakers.

Marie-Aude Baronian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She has extensively lectured and written about Armenian diasporic visual arts, ethics and aesthetics, film and philosophy, media and memory, fashion/textile and visual culture, and material objects. Her most recent monographs include “Screening Memory: The Prosthetic Images of Atom Egoyan” (2017), and “Image et Mémoire: Regards sur la Catastrophe arménienne” (2013).

*This event is cosponsored by the Society for Armenian Studies.*

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:34:19 -0400 2022-04-07T19:00:00-04:00 2022-04-07T21:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion Arsinée Khanjian, actress, performer, producer, and civil rights activist. Photo Credit: Guilio Muratori
CAS Lecture | The Geography of Genocide: Mapping Refugee Movement at the End of World War I (April 20, 2022 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/93488 93488-21705059@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, April 20, 2022 5:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Armenian Studies

IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL EVENT

Room 555, Weiser Hall
500 Church Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Or participate virtually by registering in advance for the webinar: https://myumi.ch/J899b

After registration, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the webinar.

This talk maps the Armenian Genocide refugee crisis to render visible the human geography of total war. For those stuck in the no man’s land between war and peace in the Ottoman Empire, World War I did not end with the signing of the 1918 armistices or the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. It continued beyond the signing of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty and produced the world’s largest refugee crisis to date while leaving a legacy of political instability that continues to plague the region. Deep maps – rendered using ARC- GIS technology and data from official documents, institutional records, and diaries of aid workers, refugees, and other non-combatants – reveal how refugee routes and war relief infrastructure reconfigured the landscape. The refugee experience of those fleeing genocide took form in the desert, the camp, and on the road during a protracted and seemingly unending war that had important consequences for minorities in the postwar Middle East.

Michelle Tusan is Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her publications include “The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide” (2017/2019), “Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide and the Birth of the Middle East” (2012), and articles in the American Historical Review and Past and Present. A forthcoming piece in the Journal of Modern History, “From Concentration Camp to Site of Refuge,” traces the significance of the camp in the refugee experience during WWI. She is working on a book provisionally entitled, “The Last Treaty: The Middle Eastern Front and the End of the First World War” which rewrites the final years of the war as a story of humanitarian crisis and failed diplomacy.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at caswebinars@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 16 Mar 2022 09:00:02 -0400 2022-04-20T17:00:00-04:00 2022-04-20T18:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for Armenian Studies Lecture / Discussion Michelle Tusan, Professor of History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas