Professor Hovannisian in European/American Conferences

RICHARD G HOVANNISIAN PROFESSOR EMERITUS Ph.D., UCLA, 1966. Armenian Educational Foundation Professor of Modern Armenian History

Phone: 310-825-3375
Fax: 310-206-9630
E-mail: hovannis@history.ucla.edu

Press Release, April 14, 2009

Contact:  James Robbins

International Conferences

UCLA. During the first quarter of 2009, Professor Richard G. Hovannisian, AEF Chair in Modern Armenian History at UCLA, participated in twelve conferences and community lectures in Europe and the United States. The most recent was the 35^th Anniversary Conference of the Society for Armenian Studies held at UCLA from March 26-28. Hovannisian, serving for the seventh time as the president of the SAS, was the conference coordinator and chaired the session on the hundredth anniversary of the Adana/Cilicia massacres of 1909, with the participation of Drs. Bedross Der Matossian, Rubina Peroomian, and Ph.D. candidate Ohannes Kilicdagi.

Drs. Richard and Vartiter Hovannisian were in Stockholm, Sweden, from March 20 to 25, for an international conference titled “The Legacy of the 1915 Genocide in the Ottoman Empire,” with the participation of Armenian, Assyrian, Pontic, Turkish, and Swedish scholars. The moving force behind conference, held in the Kungsholmens Konferens Center on March 23, was Mr. Vahagn Avedian, Chairman of the Union of Armenian Associations in Sweden, together with Stefan Anderson of the Living History Forum. In his morning keynote address on “The Phases and Faces of the Denial of the 1915 Genocides,” Hovannisian assessed the various stages and changing strategies of denial from 1915 to the present. Ragip Zarakolu of Istanbul reflected on current discussions of the genocide in Turkey; Prof. David Gaunt explained the internal and external struggle for recognition of the Assyrian Genocide; Laurent Leylekian of the Armenian Federation, Brussels, analyzed Turkey’s policy relating to the Armenian Genocide within the framework of accession to the European Union; and Professor Ove Bring considered the legal dimensions of the 1915 atrocities. The conference was moderated by noted foreign correspondent Marika Griehsel.

On March 22, Hovannisian, Zarakolu, and Leylekian engaged in an informal roundtable with the Swedish Armenian community and organizations. And on March 24, before returning to the United States for the SAS conference, Hovannisian was guest lecturer at Uppsala University on the topic of the “Armenian Genocide as the Prototype of Modern Mass Killings.”

Prior to his trip to Sweden, Richard Hovannisian was at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, for a four-day conference, March 18-21, on “Armenia and Armenians in International Treaties.” The conference was organized by the Michigan Armenian Studies Program under the direction of Prof. Gerard Libaridian. Among the more than twenty treaties that were discussed, Hovannisian focused on “The Unratified Treaty of Alexandropol as the Basis for Subsequent Russian-Turkish-Armenian Relations,” giving little-known details about the negotiation of the controversial treaty and its relevance today.

Community Lectures

Hovannisian’s community lectures during the first part of 2009 included the Comité des Arméniens de Belgique in Brussels, February 1; St. James Church and its newly-formed Armenian Cultural Association of Sacramento, February 7; Armenian Cultural Association of Munich, February 21, and Surp Khatch Armenian Church and Armenian Association of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, February 22; St. Sarkis Church and Armenian Cultural Association of the Carolinas, Charlotte, February 28;  La Casa Armena Milano, Italy, March 8; and the Armenian National Committee of Providence, April 3. In addition, on March 4, Richard Hovannisian was at the Pasadena headquarters of Facing History and Ourselves, Inc. to direct a conference call with staff members around the country on issues relating to the Armenian Genocide and approaches to teaching the subject in middle schools and high schools.

In the second half of April, Richard and Vartiter Hovannisian will be in Yerevan for the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia and to participate in a conference sponsored by the Armenian Genocide Institute and Museum on the Cilician massacres of 1909.

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