PRESS RELEASE
UCLA AEF Chair in Armenian History
Tel: 310-825-3375
Email: [email protected]
Contact: Mary Hendra
PRESS RELEASE
April 2, 2015
RICHARD HOVANNISIAN WITH SHOAH DELEGATION TO YEREVAN
The Shoah Foundation, headed by executive director Stephen Smith, will
be present in Yerevan for ceremonies marking the centenary of the
Armenian Genocide. The delegation, composed of Dr. Smith, Karen
Jungblut, Director of Documentation and Research; Professor Wolf
Gruner, Director of the Center for Advanced Genocide Studies; and
Professor Richard Hovannisian of UCLA and USC, will attend the two-day
Global Forum, where Smith and Hovannisian will give brief addresses
and on April 24 lay a wreath from the Shoah Foundation at the Genocide
Memorial. From Yerevan, the delegation will travel to Istanbul to
participate in the outdoor program to take place in Taksim Square on
the evening of April 24. The Shoah Foundation is placing 30 Armenian
survivor interviews on its web site during the month of April.
Richard Hovannisian has been filmed to introduce the first five in the
series, which may be accessed on the USC Shoah Foundation web site
https://sfi.usc.edu/search/node/hovannisian
While in Yerevan, Professor Hovannisian will also be honored on April
21 on the occasion of the publication of the Armenian translation of
Volume II of his Republic of Armenia. The event is sponsored by the
Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences and the International
Center for National and International Studies. Volumes three and four
in the series are currently being translated as well.
Los Angeles, Jerusalem, Vancouver
Richard Hovannisian has participated in a number of genocide-related
programs during
the first part of 2015. In January, he was the featured speaker at the
conference of Association of Holocaust Organizations meeting at the
University of Southern California. He then traveled to Jerusalem to
meet with Holocaust and Genocide scholars and give a public lecture in
the Tarkmanchats School for members and seminarians of the brotherhood
of Saint James and for the Armenian community. That month, both his
personal and academic lives were featured in a USC Armenian Institute
conversation titled `Half Immigrant,' with History Department Chair
William Deverell as moderator. Hovannisian was a discussant in the CSU
Northridge conference `Accounting and Accountability,' organized by
Dr. Vahram Shemmassian of the Armenian Studies Program on January 31,
and spoke at the Abril Bookstore on his most recent volume, The
Armenian Communities of Asia Minor,
On February 11, Hovannisian joined radio host Ian Masters and David L.
Philips of Columbia University in the Hammer Museum in Westwood in a
lively discussion on `The Armenian Genocide: A Hundred Years of
Denial.' He also gave an illustrated talk to the Armenian Youth
Association of California on the Armenian communities of the Kesaria
(Kayseri) region, and was in Vancouver, Canada on February 28, for a
lecture sponsored by the Armenian Genocide Centenary Commemoration
Committee. The talk include film segments prepared by Ani Hovannisian
Kevorkian on Armenian Dikranagerd (Diyarbekir) and the
Armenian-speaking Hamshen people of the Black Sea.
New York, Nebraska, France
A variety of centenary-related programs were organized in March. A
major three-day conference titled `Responsibility 2015' was organized
by the Eastern Region of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in the
Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York's Times Square, March 13-15, with
participants from America, Europe, and the Middle East and with
keynote speaker international law specialist Geoffrey Robinson. From
among the dozen innovative sessions, Richard Hovannisian discussed the
state of Armenian Genocide research and during an authors' luncheon
that featured a number of American Armenian writers reflected on the
scope of his publications. While in New York, he gave an extensive
filmed interview for the joint project of the Zoryan Institute and
AGBU to prepare educational videos for the AGBU webtalk series,
scheduled to begin in April.
Hovannisian returned to Los Angeles to address an
educators' workshop and dinner, `An Evening of Learning,' sponsored by
the Facing History and Ourselves Foundation, in which he discussed key
issues relating to teaching about the Armenian Genocide, as mandated
both in the 1980s and in 2014 as a part of the Social Studies
Curriculum Framework of the State of California. In addition,
Hovannisian was previously filmed by Facing History for a unit placed
on its web site on the centenary of the Armenian Genocide
A major conference on the Armenian Genocide was organized
in Middle America by Professor Bedross Der Matossian of the University
of Nebraska in Lincoln on March 19-20. Despite pressure on the
University by outside sources, the conference titled `Crossing the
Centennial: The Historiography of the Armenian Genocide Re-Evaluated'
attracted a large audience to hear speakers from Turkey, Israel,
Armenia, several countries in Europe, and both the United States and
Canada. There, Hovannisian reviewed the changes and significant
advances in the historiography of the Armenian Genocide since the
beginning of his career in the 1960s.
At the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church on Sunday,
March 22, Richard Hovannisian joined Dr. Stephen Smith as one of the
keynote speakers in a joint Armenian-Jewish commemorative program
under the auspices of His Eminence Archbishop Hovnan Derderian and the
co-sponsorship of the American Jewish Committee of Los Angeles, whose
president emphasized the unwavering commitment of his organization to
recognition and commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.
More than 60 speakers participated in a four-day
conference in Paris, March 25-28, titled `Le génocide des Arméniens de
l'Empire ottoman,' which assessed a century of study and scholarship
on the subject. The government-funded conference organized by the
International Scientific Commission was opened in the amphitheater of
Sorbonne University with forceful words of commitment by the Minister
of Education and a masterful historical overview by Professor Yves
Ternon. The deliberations of the next three days took place in the
Shoah Foundation, the School for Advanced Social Science Research, and
the National Library of France. It is significant that nearly a third
of the presenters were citizens of Turkey. Richard Hovannisian gave
introductory remarks and chaired the panel on `Perpetrators, Victims,
and Rescuers,' and spoke in the concluding roundtable panel on the
contemporary denial and its practitioners. On the eve of the
international conference, the Hamazkayin Cultural Association of Paris
organized an evening with Professor Hovannisian and Ani Kevorkian
Hovannisian in the historic Armenian church of Surb Hovhannes
Mkrtich/John the Baptist.
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota
Prior to departing for Yerevan with the Shoah Foundation Delegation,
Richard Hovannisian's April lectures include Kean University in New
Jersey on April 7, sponsored by Holocaust and Genocide Studies; the
UCLA conference `Genocide and Global History,' organized by Professor
Sebouh Aslanian and the Chair in Modern Armenian History on April 10;
`We Not Only Survived, but Thrived' conference, sponsored by the
Saints Sahag and Mesrop Church of Philadelphia and organized by
Dr. Alfred Mueller II on April 11, and the World Without Genocide
organization of William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul on April
14. Following his return from Yerevan and Istanbul, Richard
Hovannisian will give the Armenian Genocide centenary lecture at
Chapman University in Orange, California on April 28 and at Portland
State University on May 6.
From: A. Papazian
UCLA AEF Chair in Armenian History
Tel: 310-825-3375
Email: [email protected]
Contact: Mary Hendra
PRESS RELEASE
April 2, 2015
RICHARD HOVANNISIAN WITH SHOAH DELEGATION TO YEREVAN
The Shoah Foundation, headed by executive director Stephen Smith, will
be present in Yerevan for ceremonies marking the centenary of the
Armenian Genocide. The delegation, composed of Dr. Smith, Karen
Jungblut, Director of Documentation and Research; Professor Wolf
Gruner, Director of the Center for Advanced Genocide Studies; and
Professor Richard Hovannisian of UCLA and USC, will attend the two-day
Global Forum, where Smith and Hovannisian will give brief addresses
and on April 24 lay a wreath from the Shoah Foundation at the Genocide
Memorial. From Yerevan, the delegation will travel to Istanbul to
participate in the outdoor program to take place in Taksim Square on
the evening of April 24. The Shoah Foundation is placing 30 Armenian
survivor interviews on its web site during the month of April.
Richard Hovannisian has been filmed to introduce the first five in the
series, which may be accessed on the USC Shoah Foundation web site
https://sfi.usc.edu/search/node/hovannisian
While in Yerevan, Professor Hovannisian will also be honored on April
21 on the occasion of the publication of the Armenian translation of
Volume II of his Republic of Armenia. The event is sponsored by the
Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences and the International
Center for National and International Studies. Volumes three and four
in the series are currently being translated as well.
Los Angeles, Jerusalem, Vancouver
Richard Hovannisian has participated in a number of genocide-related
programs during
the first part of 2015. In January, he was the featured speaker at the
conference of Association of Holocaust Organizations meeting at the
University of Southern California. He then traveled to Jerusalem to
meet with Holocaust and Genocide scholars and give a public lecture in
the Tarkmanchats School for members and seminarians of the brotherhood
of Saint James and for the Armenian community. That month, both his
personal and academic lives were featured in a USC Armenian Institute
conversation titled `Half Immigrant,' with History Department Chair
William Deverell as moderator. Hovannisian was a discussant in the CSU
Northridge conference `Accounting and Accountability,' organized by
Dr. Vahram Shemmassian of the Armenian Studies Program on January 31,
and spoke at the Abril Bookstore on his most recent volume, The
Armenian Communities of Asia Minor,
On February 11, Hovannisian joined radio host Ian Masters and David L.
Philips of Columbia University in the Hammer Museum in Westwood in a
lively discussion on `The Armenian Genocide: A Hundred Years of
Denial.' He also gave an illustrated talk to the Armenian Youth
Association of California on the Armenian communities of the Kesaria
(Kayseri) region, and was in Vancouver, Canada on February 28, for a
lecture sponsored by the Armenian Genocide Centenary Commemoration
Committee. The talk include film segments prepared by Ani Hovannisian
Kevorkian on Armenian Dikranagerd (Diyarbekir) and the
Armenian-speaking Hamshen people of the Black Sea.
New York, Nebraska, France
A variety of centenary-related programs were organized in March. A
major three-day conference titled `Responsibility 2015' was organized
by the Eastern Region of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in the
Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York's Times Square, March 13-15, with
participants from America, Europe, and the Middle East and with
keynote speaker international law specialist Geoffrey Robinson. From
among the dozen innovative sessions, Richard Hovannisian discussed the
state of Armenian Genocide research and during an authors' luncheon
that featured a number of American Armenian writers reflected on the
scope of his publications. While in New York, he gave an extensive
filmed interview for the joint project of the Zoryan Institute and
AGBU to prepare educational videos for the AGBU webtalk series,
scheduled to begin in April.
Hovannisian returned to Los Angeles to address an
educators' workshop and dinner, `An Evening of Learning,' sponsored by
the Facing History and Ourselves Foundation, in which he discussed key
issues relating to teaching about the Armenian Genocide, as mandated
both in the 1980s and in 2014 as a part of the Social Studies
Curriculum Framework of the State of California. In addition,
Hovannisian was previously filmed by Facing History for a unit placed
on its web site on the centenary of the Armenian Genocide
A major conference on the Armenian Genocide was organized
in Middle America by Professor Bedross Der Matossian of the University
of Nebraska in Lincoln on March 19-20. Despite pressure on the
University by outside sources, the conference titled `Crossing the
Centennial: The Historiography of the Armenian Genocide Re-Evaluated'
attracted a large audience to hear speakers from Turkey, Israel,
Armenia, several countries in Europe, and both the United States and
Canada. There, Hovannisian reviewed the changes and significant
advances in the historiography of the Armenian Genocide since the
beginning of his career in the 1960s.
At the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church on Sunday,
March 22, Richard Hovannisian joined Dr. Stephen Smith as one of the
keynote speakers in a joint Armenian-Jewish commemorative program
under the auspices of His Eminence Archbishop Hovnan Derderian and the
co-sponsorship of the American Jewish Committee of Los Angeles, whose
president emphasized the unwavering commitment of his organization to
recognition and commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.
More than 60 speakers participated in a four-day
conference in Paris, March 25-28, titled `Le génocide des Arméniens de
l'Empire ottoman,' which assessed a century of study and scholarship
on the subject. The government-funded conference organized by the
International Scientific Commission was opened in the amphitheater of
Sorbonne University with forceful words of commitment by the Minister
of Education and a masterful historical overview by Professor Yves
Ternon. The deliberations of the next three days took place in the
Shoah Foundation, the School for Advanced Social Science Research, and
the National Library of France. It is significant that nearly a third
of the presenters were citizens of Turkey. Richard Hovannisian gave
introductory remarks and chaired the panel on `Perpetrators, Victims,
and Rescuers,' and spoke in the concluding roundtable panel on the
contemporary denial and its practitioners. On the eve of the
international conference, the Hamazkayin Cultural Association of Paris
organized an evening with Professor Hovannisian and Ani Kevorkian
Hovannisian in the historic Armenian church of Surb Hovhannes
Mkrtich/John the Baptist.
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota
Prior to departing for Yerevan with the Shoah Foundation Delegation,
Richard Hovannisian's April lectures include Kean University in New
Jersey on April 7, sponsored by Holocaust and Genocide Studies; the
UCLA conference `Genocide and Global History,' organized by Professor
Sebouh Aslanian and the Chair in Modern Armenian History on April 10;
`We Not Only Survived, but Thrived' conference, sponsored by the
Saints Sahag and Mesrop Church of Philadelphia and organized by
Dr. Alfred Mueller II on April 11, and the World Without Genocide
organization of William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul on April
14. Following his return from Yerevan and Istanbul, Richard
Hovannisian will give the Armenian Genocide centenary lecture at
Chapman University in Orange, California on April 28 and at Portland
State University on May 6.
From: A. Papazian