Friday and Saturday, January 28-29, 2022
On Zoom and the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute YouTube channel.
The profession of history and its practitioners have often been at the forefront or in the trenches of ethnic conflicts and cleansings from the Balkans to the Former Soviet Union. Spurred by the violence and monument-destruction in the mountainous region of the Karabakh, this symposium brings together some of the world’s leading authorities to examine the role of historians in fanning the flames of ethnic/territorial conflicts across the troubled landscape of the South Caucasus.
Examining case studies from Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia to Nagorno Karabakh and its surrounding regions and Nakhijevan in Azerbaijan, scholars will present comparative and connective histories of how the historian’s craft and its proponents have been implicated in the incitement of conflict and the destruction of cultural heritage. Topics to be explored include Soviet nationality policy, the production of national histories for the South Caucasian nationalities, the standardization of curricula of national histories under Soviet and post-Soviet rule, and the destruction of historical monuments.
A concluding plenary panel will assess the question of historical memory in the South Caucasus and how historians in the region can help facilitate peace and conflict resolution.
DAY 2: January 29, 2022
PANEL 3: Ethnic Conflict, Historians, and Monument Preservation/Desecration 12-2pm Eastern / 9-11am Pacific
Hagop Kouloujian: Panel Chair
Hamlet Petrosyan: The Cultural Heritage and Monuments of Artsakh/Karabakh at the Cross-hairs of Azerbaijani Attacks: From the 1960s to the Present
Christina Maranci: Strzygowski’s Ghost
Patrick Donabedian: Armenian Architecture of Artsakh: Observations on its Characteristic Features
Anoush Suni: Discussant
BREAK: 2-2:30pm Eastern / 11-11:30pm Pacific
PANEL 4: Historians, the “Titular” Nation, and Minorities in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan 2:30-4:30pm Eastern / 11:30am - 1:30pm Pacific
Melissa Bilal: Panel Chair
Artyom Tonoyan: Sacred Causes, State Interests: Religion and Violence During the Second Karabakh War
Oliver Reisner: History for the Masses: About the Relationship Between Historians and Politics in Stalinist Georgia
Arsène Saparov: Place-Names Wars in Karabakh: Russian Imperial Maps and Political Legitimacy in the Caucasus
Mikail Mamedov: Discussant
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION on Historians, Collective Memory, and Conflict Resolution 4:30-6pm Eastern / 1:30-3PM Pacific
Vicken Cheterian
Boris Adjemian
Gayane Shagoyan
David Leupold
Lusine Kharatyan
Click here for the video and program for DAY 1.
For the complete two-day program, click here.
ORGANIZER
Armenian Studies Center of the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute
CO-SPONSORS
UCLA Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History
UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies
UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)