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Armenian colloquium helps preserve culture

By Skye Mayring

DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR

smayring@media.ucla.edu

A monk who blinded himself in order to resist temptation.

Women demand the right to divorce the husbands who abandoned them.

The emergence of a 17th-century school of miniaturist painters.

These and other subjects were discussed at Friday’s graduate student colloquium, underscoring larger historical, social and artistic research topics in Armenian studies.

The UCLA Armenian Graduate Students Association hosted its fourth annual Graduate Student Colloquium in Armenian Studies on Friday, which is a daylong event of interdisciplinary presentations and discussions.

Attendees included international scholars from Hungary, Lebanon, Armenia, the United States, Israel and England, lecturing on art, drama and film in addition to social and religious issues concerning Armenian communities.

The colloquium was created “by grad students for grad students,” said Ara Soghomonian, one of the event organizers and lecturers.

The lecturers consisted solely of graduate scholars, several of whom arranged the event.

The colloquium’s exchange of information and the intermingling of scholars was intended to foster the professional and academic careers of the graduate students involved, according to the event’s program.

An analysis of the critically acclaimed diaspora novel “Retreat Without Song” was led by Nanor Kenderian, a graduate student in Oriental studies at Oxford University in England.

Myrna Douzjian, project director for the Colloquium, said she looked forward to this particular presentation the most because the novel is considered an “Armenian classic.”

Each session of lectures was followed by an open discussion which allowed the audience to ask the panel questions.

A surge of questions followed a presentation on marriage legalities for Armenians in the late Ottoman period led by Hasmik Khalapyan, a doctoral candidate at the History Department of Central European University in Hungary. Since there were no written laws on marriage until 1914, polygamy was common while obtaining a divorce could be tediously difficult, Khalapyan said.

When asked if Armenian women continue to play a subordinate role in marriage, Khalapyan said “(women) don’t play a subordinate role in just Armenia, but everywhere.”

The effects of the Ottoman Empire’s rule on Armenian history have produced controversial accounts from different countries.

“Armenian history is the struggle to maintain Armenian identity,” said Dzovig Kassabian, a doctoral student in Mental Health and Trauma at Haigazian University in Lebanon.

One issue within the Armenian community is the 1915 Armenian Genocide, which neither the U.S. nor the Turkis government has ever officially recognized. An estimated 1.5 million people were killed and surviving Armenian families were forced to evacuate.

“My grandparents were deported from Armenia in 1915. So, I am the second generation (born in Lebanon). It is my dream to move back to Armenia,” Kassabian said.

Several of the colloquium lecturers said they observed significant political and communal progression in their visits to Armenia since it gained its freedom from Soviet rule 15 years ago.

“When I first went there in 1995 the people seemed not so much defeated, but that something was bogging them down. In 2002, they were much more open to other cultures and concerned with making progress within their community,” said Janelle Pulczinski, a graduate student in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Sissian, Armenia.

The association created another arena for the flow of Armenian ideas in the Kerckhoff Art Gallery this past weekend, an exhibition of the posters.

“The Armenian Genocide: the Power of Posters” exhibit featured replicas of the 1918 relief agency posters which raised funds for survivors.

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