Prior Years — UCLA Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History

The talk examines the life and work of Sahag II Khabayan, the Catholicos of the House of Cilicia, as a lens through which to explore the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath.

In his talk, Dr. Leupold will argue that these alternative imaginaries of the urban were informed, in an unexpected dialectical twist, both by retrotopian yearning for a (pre-)colonial past that was coming undone before their eyes and anticipation for a utopian future at a point of post-revolutionary history largely understood by its contemporaries as the dawn of socialist worldmaking. 

The main focus of this research is the transformations of spatial and temporal perceptions, communications, and material capital in the Mediterranean environment during the 12th-14th centuries, which had a direct impact on the transformations of the societies of both Western European and Eastern Mediterranean countries.

This all day symposium is dedicated to honoring and celebrating the life and legacy of UCLA Professor Richard G. Hovannisian who was a faculty member at UCLA for over 50 years and was the first holder of the Armenian Educational Foundation Professorial Chair in Modern Armenian History, now named in his honor.