Microhistories of Armenian Early Modernity:

A UCLA Workshop on Diaspora, Print Culture, Confession Building, and Governmentality,

c. 1512/1598-1789

Organized by the UCLA Richard Hovannisian Chair of Modern Armenian History

Co-sponsored by the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History, UCLA Narekatsi Chair in Armenian Studies, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA Promise Armenian Institute

May 29-30, 2026

UCLA, YRL Main Conference Room 11360

Scholars of early modern Armenian history—a period during which Armenians emerged as significant agents in global developments—debate the era’s chronological boundaries. Proposed starting points include the advent of the first printed Armenian book in 1512 or the upheavals of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, specifically the Celali uprisings and the Great Flight (Büyük Kaçgun) of 1598–1620, together with Shah Abbas I's Great Deportations (Büyük Sürgün) of 1604–1608. These different dates and the events they represent constitute in some ways a significant historical threshold bringing the medieval period to a denouement and ushering in the early modern era during which Armenians, whether in Mediterranean or Atlantic Seaboard or in India and the Indian Ocean, became increasingly integrated into a larger, more global history. The period concludes around 1789, marking the French Revolution and the inauguration of a modern age of representative government and modern nationalism.

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 developments associated with early modernity more broadly.

To this end, the symposium seeks to showcase separate panels devoted but not restricted to the following hallmarks of Armenian early modernity:

·      Mobility and print culture

·      Diasporic cultural and intellectual production

·      Confession, heresy, imposture, and religious identity

·      Heterographic literary and cultural production in fields such as Armeno-Turkish or Armeno-Persian

Participants will be asked to circulate selected methodological readings on microhistory in advance and to frame their presentations in relation to these shared scholarly concerns.

300-word abstracts and paper titles must be submitted to Sebouh Aslanian (sebouhaslanian@gmail.com) and Sona Tajiryan (stajiryan@gmail.com) by Monday, February 15, 2026.

The workshop will convene at UCLA on Friday-Saturday, May 29-30, 2026. The organizers will provide for participants’ airfare and accommodation at UCLA.