The Society for Armenian Studies Organizes an International Conference on the First Republic of Armenia

An international conference, “Innovative Approaches to the History of the First Republic of Armenian, 1918-1920,” will take place from noon-3:00PM on Thursday, November 15, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas. The conference, co-sponsored by the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) and the Armenian Communities Department of the Gulbenkian Foundation, will be held in the Travis D (3) room of the Grand Hyatt San Antonio in conjunction with the Middle East Studies Association 52nd Annual Meeting to take place at the same hotel between November 15-18, 2018.

The Conference will consist of two sessions and is open to the public. SAS President Bedross Der Matossian (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) will deliver the opening remarks. The first session, chaired by Tsolin Nalbantian (Leiden University), is entitled “The First Republic in the International Context.” It consists of three papers: George Bournoutian (Iona College), “The Territorial Demands of the Armenian Republic: Reality versus Naiveté”; Vartan Matiossian (Armenian National Education Committee, New York), “The Recognition of the First Republic of Armenia in South America (1918-1920”; and Ari Sekeryan (University of Oxford), “Rethinking the Establishment of the First Republic of Armenia: Reactions of the Ottoman-Turkish and Armenian Press in Istanbul.”

The second session, chaired by Barlow Der Mugrdechian (California State University, Fresno), is entitled “Gender, Personalities, and Culture during the First Republic.” It consists of four papers: Seda D. Ohanian (National Academy of Science of Armenia) “Armenian Women in the Parliament of the First Republic (1918-1920)”; Jakub Osiecki (Jagiellonian University in Krakow) “The trip of Apostolic Visitor Rev. Antonio Delpuche to Yerevan as the Attempt to Establish Diplomatic Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Vatican”; Khatchig Mouradian (Columbia University) “Becoming Aram: The Legacy of a Revolutionary Statesman”; and Khoren Grigoryan (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia) “Banknotes of the First Republic of Armenia: 1918-1920.”

Richard G. Hovannisian (UCLA and Chapman University) will deliver the concluding remarks.

Scholars will deliver a dozen other Armenian-themed papers during the course of the MESA conference, November 15-18. For a full program of their sessions, please visit the MESA website.

The Society for Armenian Studies represents scholars and teachers in the field of Armenian Studies. It publishes the peer-reviewed Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, available on its website: societyforarmenianstudies.com.For more information about the Society, please contact SAS President Bedross Der Matossian at bdermatossian2@unl.edu .