News

4 June 2026 Balliol College (University of Oxford), Gillis Lecture Theatre, 9am-5pm GMT. This one-day workshop explores how and why languages were taught, learned, and sustained across the diverse and shifting socio-cultural landscapes of the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean. Integrating history with literary studies and historical sociolinguistics and adopting a comparative and cross-disciplinary perspective, the workshop aims to identify shared trends, comparable elements, and distinctive features in language learning and transmission. This approach offers a renewed perspective on the interconnected Mediterranean world—a region where multilingualism, mobility, and intercultural exchange were and are central to daily life. The impact...

The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will co-sponsor a series of three programs with Dr. Taner Akçam and Dr. Michael Bazyler in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, title “Nazi Looted Art Recovery as a Model for Recovery of AGLA: Armenian Genocide Looted Art.” They will begin on Friday, May 1, at 6:30 p.m. ET in the Skylight Room at the Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY), 365 5th Ave, New York, NY; continue on Monday, May 4, at 7:30 p.m. ET at St. Leon Armenian Apostolic Church, 12-61 Saddle River Rd, Fair Lawn,...

The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) is pleased to announce the donation to its Mardigian Library of an extraordinary book collection from siblings Zareh Kalfayan and Adrine Kalfayan Debusscher of Belgium. “This is not the largest collection NAASR has ever received,” noted Director of Academic Affairs Marc A. Mamigonian, “but it is undoubtedly one of the most significant, and contains an exceptional number of exceedingly rare, early printed Armenian books.”   Girk' Ōrinakats' ew Nmanut'eants', printed in Venice by Antonio Bortoli (1750), and Adamgirk' by Arakel Siwnets'i, printed in Constantinople by Matteos Dpir (1799).   The donation...

We would like to congratulate The Medieval Caucasus Network, their hosts at VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and NAASR's fellow co-sponsors, the Past & Present Society, the FWO (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen), the Catholic University of Louvain, the FNRS (Fonds de la recherche scientifique), and the University of Ghent on a successful conference this past March 13–14, 2026. James Baillie (Austrian Academy of Sciences), a co-convenor of the Medieval Causasus Network and a member of the conference's Organizing Committee, recently published a reflection on the Medieval Caucasus Network website titled "Studying Non-Elites in the Medieval Caucasus: Reflections," offering a...

Statement by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) March 16, 2026 We wish to express our deep concern about the unjustifiable dismissal of Dr. Edita Gzoyan as Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI) at the behest of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. As an organization, NAASR has had a productive and respectful relationship with Dr. Gzoyan, as we have with her predecessors, as we hope to have with future directors, and as we have with other outstanding institutions in Armenia with which we cultivate strong relationships. However, such academic partnerships are built on trust established through a mutual...

The Mardigian Library of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) is pleased to announce the receipt of a significant donation of publications from the Catholicosate of Cilicia and the Armenian Prelacy of the Eastern USA. This donation was initiated following the pontifical visit of His Holiness Catholicos Aram I to NAASR on October 11, 2024. During this visit, His Holiness requested that His Eminence Archbishop Anoushavan Tanielian, Prelate of the Eastern Prelacy, arrange for publications issued by the Catholicosate of Cilicia to be sent to NAASR’s Mardigian Library. In particular, His Holiness noticed that the library lacked...

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...

The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) is pleased to announce the 2025 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prizes for Excellence in Armenian Studies, awarded to Dr. Boris Adjemian for The Brass Band of the King: Armenians in Ethiopia (I.B. Tauris) and Drs. Sergio La Porta and Alison M. Vacca for An Armenian Futūḥ Narrative: Łewond's Eighth-Century History of the Caliphate (Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago). The 2025 awards are for books with a 2024 publication date. Boris Adjemian is the Director of the AGBU Nubar Library, France. He holds a PhD in history from École des Hautes Études en Sciences...

Scholars are invited to submit abstracts for an international conference, History Embodied: Biography and Armenian American Studies, which will convene at NAASR on October 22–23, 2026, to examine how biographical and prosopographic approaches can deepen the study of Armenian American history.

NAASR Receives Huge Collection of Records The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) recently received a huge collection of records for its Mardigian Library from Jasper Kezerian of Waltham, MA, from the collection of his late father Thomas Kezerian (1921-2011). The collection consists of more than 1,200 discs, of which the vast majority are 78 rpm records, dating from the early 1900s through the 1950s. Originating in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, Egypt, Soviet Armenia, Europe, North America, and other places, these recordings include instrumental and vocal music in Armenian, Turkish, Greek, Arabic, and other languages of the region, performed...