Author: Dabaghian Diana

The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will host an online panel talk by Gregory Aftandilian titled, “Recreating Kharpert in Massachusetts,” on Thursday, January 25, 2024, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern / 4:30 p.m. Pacific.  

The webinar will be accessible live on Zoom (registration required) and on NAASR’s YouTube Channel.

There is a special connection between the Armenian Americans of Massachusetts and the Ottoman province of Mamuret ul-Aziz, which the Armenians called Kharpert. Kharpert Armenians began arriving in Massachusetts, particularly in the Worcester area, beginning in the mid-19th century, though the bulk of the immigration resulted from the Hamidian massacres (1894-1896) and later the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The survivors of these calamities faced the fact that there were no homes or homeland to go back to. To ease such dislocations, the survivors settled in Armenian communities in America where their fellow provincial compatriots had already laid down roots. Social life among this generation was largely confined to people from their own province.

Aftandilian will consider how provincial identities from the former Ottoman Empire were so strong and durable for at least two generations in America, despite assimilation trends. Having lost everything in their homeland—family members, homes, farms and businesses—they did their best to recreate Kharpert in Massachusetts as a coping mechanism for the trauma they endured, in addition to helping them adjust to a strange new land and society.

Aftandilian is senior professorial lecturer at American University in Washington, D.C., where he teaches courses on U.S. foreign policy and Middle East politics. He spent over 20 years in U.S. government service where he was a foreign policy advisor to Congressman Chris Van Hollen, professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, foreign policy advisor to Senator Paul Sarbanes and foreign policy fellow to Senator Edward Kennedy. Prior to these congressional positions, he served as a Middle East analyst in the State Department.

Aftandilian is the author of the book Armenia – Vision of a Republic: The Independence Lobby in America, 1918-1927 and numerous articles on Armenian-American history. He holds a B.A. in history from Dartmouth College, an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago and an M.Sc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He served on NAASR’s Board of Directors from 2005-2019.

For more information, contact NAASR at [email protected].

I was recently at St. Gregory the Illuminator Church in Chicago for a concert. I noticed a photo, black and white, taken at a banquet at the Sheraton Towers on June 25, 1960, in honor of the visit of Catholicos Vazken I, of blessed memory. The photo was taken from a balcony and showed the head table and at least 30 tables of 10 people that could fit in the shot. Everyone was dressed up—to the nines as they used to say. My guess is there were 350-500 people in attendance.

The photo was impressive, not only because it captured a celebration of a Pontifical visit, or coincidently, that it was taken on the evening of my seventh birthday. It was something more—something nostalgic. There have been photos like this in every Armenian church, agoump or getron, in commemorative and souvenir booklets. These photos, always in black and white and from an aerial vantage point, keep us rooted to the past. They are always taken from an aerial vantage point, in the grand ballroom of a swanky downtown hotel. They capture the gatherings of Armenians in the U.S. honoring or commemorating something—a convention, the founding of a church, the burning of a mortgage, or perhaps the 25th anniversary of this or the 30th anniversary of that.

I am sure these photos are not unique to the Armenian community. Every ethnic group, church, civic or professional organization likely has similar photos.

Banquet at the Sheraton Towers in Chicago on June 25, 1960, in honor of the visit of Catholicos Vazken I, of blessed memory

From my perspective, I have seen more Armenian banquet photos than any others. These panoramic photos have impressed me for years, especially those from the 1930s and 1940s. These photos of hundreds of Armenians, dressed in their finest gathered in luxurious ballrooms, were taken just 15-30 years after the Genocide. It is hard to distinguish faces pictured beyond the front two rows of tables, and if the photo is not from Detroit, where I grew up, there is almost zero chance I will recognize anyone. Yet, I am mesmerized by these photos. I look at and study them much longer than I would a masterpiece in an art museum. It is a window to the first generation, the survivors of the Genocide. Who is the baker, the butcher, the storekeeper, the rug merchant? Who are the factory workers and common laborers? To me, they all seem to say, “Look at us. We not only survived but are thriving. We miss our homeland, but look at us.”

Why don’t we see more banquet photos these days? We certainly have photos of participants and delegates of various conventions, Armenian and Sunday School students, and gatherings on the steps of churches or other venues. We took photos like these then and certainly today. Yet, we almost never see these kinds of banquet photos anymore.

The answer is probably quite simple. These days we rarely use the grand city center hotels. Most of our banquets and dinners are held in suburban hotels and banquet halls. These venues were probably built after 1960. They all have something in common—none of them have balconies. It is almost impossible to get these kinds of photos without a very tall ladder or perhaps a drone. It seems these kinds of photos just faded away with the change in architecture and interior design of the newer, more “modern” venues.

There are a few modern versions of this genre of nostalgic photos. Maybe, given how many images are created these days, we should leave these panoramic banquet photos to the black and white era of that first generation.