Microhistories of Armenian Early Modernity

This two-day workshop, convened under the auspices of the UCLA Richard Hovannisian Chair of Modern Armenian History, adopts both the extended temporal framework of Armenian early modernity (1512–1789) and its more compressed formulation (c. 1598–1789). The period will be examined through two methodological lenses that have often been cast as competing yet are, in practice, profoundly complementary: Italian-style microhistory and global history. By combining microhistorical and philological attention to historical documentation on individual lives, choices, and contingencies with macrohistorical analysis of systemic change, the workshop seeks to elucidate how Armenians in the early modern era grappled with—and contributed to—many of the defining characteristics attributed to early modernity more broadly.