Event Videos (2020–2025) — UCLA Promise Armenian Institute
The Ruins of Ani: A Photographic Journey from 1881 to the Present
In this webinar, the Promise Armenian Institute marks the launch of a new digital exhibit at the Armenian Image Archive, which explores Kurkdjian’s stereoscopic images of Ani in 1881, taken over a period of five months after he was a photographer for the Russian Army. Dr. Joseph Malikian, curator of this new exhibit, will tell the story of Kurkdjian’s photographic expedition to Ani, and the opposition he encountered from the Russian authorities.
Picturing the Ottoman Armenian World: Photography in Erzurum, Harput, Van and Beyond
The Armenian contribution to Ottoman photography is supposedly well known, with histories documenting the famous studios of the imperial capital, Ottoman Armenian-run establishments that produced Orientalist visions for tourists and images of modernity for a domestic elite.
Jerusalem and the Armenians: Until the Ottoman Conquest (1516)
Claude Mutafian’s most recent book, Jérusalem et les Arméniens: Jusqu’à la conquête ottomane (1516), presents the relations between Armenia and Jerusalem in their historical and artistic context with an abundance of maps, genealogical charts, and images.
Armenian Genocide Oral History Collections at USC Shoah Foundation: An overview of the Armenian Genocide Survivor Testimony Collections in the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive (VHA)
The presentation provided an overview of the collections and a demonstration on how to use the Visual History Archive by Manuk Avedikyan, former program officer (Armenian Genocide collections) at USC Shoah Foundation.
Fridtjof Nansen: Humanitarianism and the Armenian Question in the Interwar Period
Dr. Roy Knocke sheds light on Nansen humanitarian merits during the interwar period, especially on his commitment for the Armenians, a people to whom he admiringly dedicated one of his last books Gjennem Armenia in 1927 (translated as Armenia and the Near East in 1928).
A Conversation with Dr. Dennis Papazian: Reflecting on the Past, Looking to the Future
Dennis Papazian's journey is a classic American immigrant tale. Through it all, he shares his wit, resilience, keen sense of perception, and vision, as well as the memorable characters he meets along the way, as he reflects on his consequential, eventful, and at times surprising life. It is a story that will inspire and give hope to all who join him on his journey.
AN EVENING OF TRIBUTE IN HONOR OF THE LATE PROF. VAHAKN DADRIAN
KEYNOTE SPEAKERSDR. TANER AKÇAM: Director, Armenian Genocide Research Program at the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute
DR. RICHARD HOVANNISIAN: Historian, Professor Emeritus at UCLA
DR. LUSINE SAHAKYAN: Director, Department of Armenian-Ottoman Relations Institute, Yerevan State University
STATIONS OF THE CROSS ON THE VIA DOLOROSA, 1875-2022: A Photographic and Archaeological Journey
Having launched a new exhibit from the Armenian Image Archive, the panelists explore the fourteen "Stations of the Cross" along the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, highlighting photographs from the Bonfils Studio in 1875 and new images from photographer Jack Persekian.
A HOUSE IN THE HOMELAND: Armenian Pilgrimages to Places of Ancestral Memory
In this talk, Dr. Bertram describes how, with luggage filled with stories heard from their own family members, including those transmitted through the songs they sang, the dances they danced, the foods they made, and even through their screams in the night, pilgrims understood that they were visiting a sacred landscape, albeit one violated by the profane. In this fraught yet transcendent place, pilgrims invent a series of rituals so that village by village, town by town, or even house by house, they ritually connect with their own ancestors, and, as they stand on their own ancestral land, allow them to be a part of their personal story in the present.
THE END OF ARMENIAN SIVAS: The Extermination of Deportees
Monday, April 18, 2022, 1:00pm EDT / 10:00am, PDTOn Zoom and the Promise Armenian Institute YouTube channel.PRESENTERROBERT SUKIASYAN, PhD, Fulbright Visiting Scholar, Promise Armenian InstituteDISCUSSANTRUBEN SAFRASTYAN, PhD, Counselor of Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Armenian National Academy of SciencesDeportation and massacres were the principal methods of exterminating the Ottoman Armenians. In the case of Sivas province, which had one the largest Armenian populations in the empire, the vast majority of the deportees were killed on the way to the Syrian desert. The study of survivor memoirs sheds light on this process while at the same time describing the administration...