Katrina Bissett Staff Writer Accomplished pianist and scholar Şahan Arzruni brought his love for the music of Komitas to a Fresno State audience on Sunday, October 25, 2015. A special event in the Philip Lorenz Memorial Keyboard Concert Series, the performance, titled “Komitas: A Portrait of the Musician as a Young Priest,” was a cultural treasure and was cosponsored by ...

Staff Report To mark the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) held an international conference, “The Impact of the Armenian Genocide,” on Saturday, November 21, 2015, in Denver, Colorado. The SAS is the international association of Armenian Studies scholars and teachers and held its 41st Annual Meeting on the same day in Denver. The ...

Staff Report Armenian Studies Program Coordinator Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian announced a gift of more than $97,000 from the estate of the late Anne Elizabeth Elbrecht of Davis, California, that will establish the Elbrecht Endowment in Armenian Studies. Anne Elizabeth Elbrecht passed away on September 24, 2014. After completing a degree in library science at UC Berkeley, she joined the ...

Aramayis Orkusyan Editor “2015 was a year of groundbreaking curatorial undertakings of Armenian art and marked a paradigm shift in the way contemporary Armenian art is conceptualized and exhibited globally,” stated Neery Melkonian, a New York-based independent researcher, writer, curator, and lecturer in modern and contemporary art. She discussed these shifts in her lecture, titled “What Comes After Undoing Denial: ...

Katrina Bissett Staff Writer “All the stars were against Armenia to survive,” stated screenwriter Mardik Martin. But Armenians did survive, and they are now telling their story. Armenian-themed films are beginning to gain popularity, and Fresno has now hosted the screening of two such films this year. A special screening of The Cut, an independent film centered on the life ...

Aramayis Orkusyan Editor The Young Turk Revolution was a critical point in the history of not only the Ottoman Empire, but also the history of the Armenians. This pivotal year was the topic of a lecture by Dr. Bedross Der Matossian titled “The Political Culture of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908: Space, Symbolism, and Language” presented on Friday, October ...

Staff Report Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) President Barlow Der Mugrdechian chaired the 41st Annual Meeting of the Society on Saturday, November 21, in Denver, Colorado. The Annual Meeting is an opportunity for members to discuss the major challenges of the Society and to hear a variety of reports. Der Mugrdechian reported on the activities of the Society during 2015, ...

Michael Rettig Staff Writer One important narrative of the Armenian Genocide that has been neglected is the story of the righteous Turks who risked their lives to save Armenians. It reminds us that animosity towards Armenians was not universal among Turks in the Ottoman Empire and that there were those who would defy the law to protect Armenians. This narrative ...

Lucie Ekezyan Staff Writer Fresno State offers many cultural classes and among these are courses offered by the Armenian Studies Program, which explore Armenian history, the art inspired by it, and the language that defined it. Since its inception in the 1960’s, more than a thousand students from diverse backgrounds have learned elementary Armenian language skills: speaking, writing, and reading. ...

Staff Report At the end of 2014, Dr. Sergio La Porta published a collection of essays on The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition. Co-edited with Prof. Kevork Bardakjian of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the volume, published in the Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha series of Brill publishers, contains some 30 articles by a diverse body of scholars from the United ...