Friday, March 17, 2023, at 1:00pm Eastern / 10:00am Pacific
In-Person at UCLA Royce Hall 314, Los Angeles
AND
Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 2:30pm Eastern / 11:30am Pacific
In-Person at the UCLA Fowler Museum, Lenart Hall, Los Angeles.
On Zoom and the Promise Armenian Institute YouTube channel.
Click here for the complete conference program.
This international conference celebrates the bicentenary of the founding of Kolkata's famed Armenian College (est. 1821), one of three centers of Armenian higher learning in the diaspora during the nineteenth century and the only one that has survived and is thriving today. Bringing together economic, literary, legal, and cultural historians from India, Armenia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, the conference highlights how, beginning in the early modern period and continuing to the present, Armenians have traveled to India to make its distant shores and cultures their own. India looms large in the Armenian social imaginary. It was not only the place where the first Armenian proto-constitution for an “imagined” nation-republic was published (Madras 1788/9), it was also the cradle of the first Armenian newspaper (Madras,1794-1796), the first modern Armenian play (Calcutta 1823), and arguably also where the first Eastern Armenian novel appeared (Calcutta, 1846), as well as where the first Armenian “feminist” tract (Calcutta, 1847) was published.
Gathering an international group of scholars, Armeno-Indica explores the Indo-Armenian saga in South Asia from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. Themes to be explored include the connected economic, literary, legal, and political histories of Armenians and Indians in South Asia and beyond across the waters of the Indian Ocean. The keynote for the conference will be delivered by Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam.
CO-SPONSORS
UCLA Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History
UCLA Fowler Museum
UCLA Promise Armenian Institute
UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies
USC Institute of Armenian Studies
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
DAY 1: FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2023
CHECK IN and WELCOMING REMARKS 10:00am-10:30am Pacific
Amy Landau and Ann Karagozian, Welcoming Remarks
Sebouh David Aslanian, Introduction to the Conference
PANEL 1: TRADE, LAW, AND GO-BETWEENS 10:30am-12:30pm Pacific
SANTANU SENGUPTA
Negotiating with Law: Phases of Armenian Interaction with the Early Colonial
Law Courts in India
XABIER LAMIKIZ
Armenian Merchants from Madras in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Manila:
A Story of Love and Hate
RUQUIA HUSSAIN
Of Sarhad and Calcutta: The English East India Company, Khwāja Israel di
Sarhad and the Foundation of Modern Calcutta
SONA TAJIRYAN
"Concerning the Trade of Pearls in India" and How to Value Them: An Early
Armenian Gem Merchant's View on the Accounting of Pearls
GLENN PENNY, Chair and Discussant
PANEL 2: LANGUAGE AND LITERARY REVIVAL 1:30pm-3:00pm Pacific
AHONA PANDA
Calcutta: The Outsider in the Bengal Renaissance
TALAR CHAHINIAN
Mobilizing Subjectivity in the Practice of the Nation: T‘aghideants‘s Case for
Women’s Education
PETER COWE
Intertextuality and Innovation: Mesrop T‘aghideants‘ and his Experimentation
with the Novel Genre in Comparative Perspective
HOURI BERBERIAN, Chair and Discussant
PANEL 3: ARMENIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND PRINT CULTURE IN MADRAS 3:15pm-5:00pm Pacific
MARTIN ADAMIAN
Mesrovb J. Seth, Father of Indo-Armenian Historiography
ANNA SIRINIAN
Azdarar, the First Armenian Periodical (Madras, 1794-1796)
HASMIK KIRAKOSYAN
Harut‘iwn Shmavonean, an Armenian Printer-Publisher in Madras and a
for Printing in Arabic Script in Madras
NILE GREEN, Chair and Discussant
PANEL 4: HISTORY IN THE PRESENT 5:00pm-6:30pm Pacific
ARMEN ARSLANIAN
The Armenian Church of Dhaka (Bangladesh) and the Task of Heritage
Preservation
VACHAGAN TADEVOSYAN
The Armenian College and Philanthropic Academy of Calcutta/Kolkata
SATENIK CHOOKASZIAN
Sargis Katchadourian’s Artistic Reproductions of India’s Cultural Gems from
the Collection of National Gallery of Armenia
ARMEN BAIBOURTIAN, Chair and Discussant
DAY 2: SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 2023
CHECK IN and WELCOMING REMARKS 11:30am-12:00pm Pacific
Any Landou, Shushan Karapetian, and Roupen Berberian
PANEL 1: MONUMENTS, PATRONAGE, AND INDO-PERSIANATE IDENTITIES 12:00pm -2:00pm Pacific
SEBOUH DAVID ASLANIAN
Cemeteries as Heterotopias: Armenian Sepulchral Culture in Agra and Surat,
or What the Dead Can Tell Us About the Living
TALINN GRIGOR
"Transimperial" Strategies of Artistic Patronage: From New Julfan Merchants
to Parsi Industrialists
VERONIKA ZABLOTSKY
Orientalism and the Making of the Armenian Diasporic Imaginary in Early
Colonial India
PETER COWE, Chair and Discussant
PANEL 2: THE HISTORICAL IMAGINATION AND THE CIRCULATION OF
REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS IN LATE 18TH CENTURY SOUTH INDIA 2:00pm-3:30pm Pacific
MICHAEL O'SULLIVAN
Portfolio Capitalism and History-Writing in Hagop Simonean Ayubeants'
Life of Haydar Ali Khan, c. 1782-1795
AYAL AMER
Fitna and Patriotism in Late 18th-Century Madras
SATENIG BATWAGAN-TOUFANIAN
Glory: A Call for Liberation from Madras
SEBOUH DAVID ASLANIAN, Chair and Discussant
KEYNOTE SPEAKER 4:40pm-5:40pm
SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM, "Armenians and Others in Mughal Surat: Rethinking Communities, Collaboration and Conflict"
Click here for the complete conference program.