(Treasures of NAASR’s Mardigian Library) May 28: Vratsian’s Hayastani Hanrapetutʻiwn and Hovannisian’s The Republic of Armenia

May 28 marks the establishment of the Republic of Armenia in 1918, providing us with the opportunity to look back on two monuments to the short-lived but historically important republic: Hayastani Hanrapetutʻiwn (Հայաստանի Հանրապետութիւն = The Republic of Armenia), by Simon Vrats‘ean (Սիմոն Վրացեան, also Vratsian or Vratzian; we will use the spelling Vratsian in this piece), published in 1928 in Paris, and the second revised edition published in 1958 in Beirut; and Richard G. Hovannisian’s 4-volume The Republic of Armenia (1971, 1982, 1996). We will also touch upon the very direct connection between these two landmark publications and their respective authors.

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.

First Republic Centennial Conference in Columbia University Releases Final Program and Details

The First Republic of Armenia Centennial Conference is rapidly approaching, with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Eastern Region United States sponsoring the event next week, May 11-12, at Columbia University in New York City.

The conference is co-sponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), the Armenian Review, and the Columbia Armenian Students’ Association, on the occasion of the Republic’s centennial.

As noted previously, the conference will include noted speakers from around the globe, who bring a wealth of knowledge on various topics related to Armenia and its past, present, and future. For a full listing of panels, speakers, and topics, please see the schedule below.

ARF Eastern U.S. Announces Schedule for First Republic Centennial Conference

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Eastern U.S. has announced the program schedule for the First Republic of Armenia Centennial Conference, taking place May 11-12 at Columbia University in New York.
The event is co-sponsored by the Armenian Review and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) on the occasion of the republic’s centennial.

Richard Hovannisian’s Kharpert Volume Published in Turkish

The well-known Aras Publishing House of Istanbul has announced the publication of Harput, the third volume in Turkish translation from the UCLA Conference series on Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces, organized by Professor Richard G. Hovannisian between 1997 and 2009.

Society for Armenian Studies Will Hold 40th Anniversary Workshop in Yerevan

The Society for Armenian Studies (SAS), founded in 1974, will organize a workshop to mark the 40th anniversary of its founding. The workshop, to take place October 3-5, 2014, with the participation of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, will bring together twenty scholars from abroad and twenty from Armenia to deliver papers on a number of topics such as inadequately studied aspects of Armenian history in the past millennium; the representation and reflection of the Armenian Genocide in the arts and culture in general; testimonies and reminiscences of the survivors of the Genocide; accomplishments, perspectives and methodologies in contemporary Armenian literary studies and historiography; and, the Armenian Diaspora in the 21st century, aspirations and challenges. The workshop will take place at the Presidium Hall of Sessions at the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.

"Armenian Kesaria/Kayseri and Cappadocia" Released

Armenian Kesaria/Kayseri and Cappadocia was released by Mazda Publishers in January 2014. This is the twelfth volume in the UCLA series titled Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces, edited and contributed to by Prof. Richard G. Hovannisian, Past Holder of the AEF Chair in Modern History at UCLA and currently Distinguished Chancellor’s Fellow at Chapman University in Orange County.

Taner Akcam Awarded MESA’s Prestigious Hourani Book Prize

Historian Taner Akcam has recently received the Middle East Studies Association’s (MESA) 2013 Hourani Book Prize for The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Akcam is the Robert Aram, Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marion Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University.

The Case Against Legitimizing Genocide Deniers: Scholars Speak Up

[The] willingness to ascribe to the deniers and their myths the legitimacy
of a point of view is of as great, if not greater,
concern than are the activities of the deniers themselves.

—Deborah Lipstadt

The participation of a number of Armenian studies and genocide studies scholars (*) in the conference “The Caucasus at the Imperial Twilight” in Tbilisi, Georgia, organized by Prof. M. Hakan Yavuz of the University of Utah and sponsored by the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA) has generated a controversy in the diaspora as well as in Armenia over the enabling of genocide denial.

The individual and organization at the heart of this conference have for much of the past decade been actively engaged in efforts to extend denial of the Armenian genocide into academia as well as in the political realm in North America.