RICHARD HOVANNISIAN TO VISIT YEREVAN WITH SHOAH DELEGATION
Friday, April 3rd, 2015 | Posted by Contributor
Professor Richard Hovannisian
LOS ANGELES–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 a 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.
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 included film segments prepared by Ani Hovannisian
Kevorkian on Armenian Dikranagerd (Diyarbekir) and the 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 genocide des Armeniens 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.
https://sfi.usc.edu/search/node/hovannisian
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