Dustin Vartanian Staff Writer On Friday afternoon, September 13, I walked into a classroom with the other students enrolled in Armenian Studies 120T-The Armenian Church weekend class. For most of us, participation in this class would help us understand the Church in more depth, since some already had general knowledge of how the Church operates. We walked in feeling ...

Christine Pambukyan Staff Writer After the Armenian Genocide displaced many Armenians from the Ottoman occupied regions of their homeland in 1915, Modern Western Armenian became a language of the Diaspora. As time went on, some Armenians began to forget their native language and assimilated to English, French, German, or other dominant languages of the countries they moved to in order ...

Yervand Boyajyan Staff Writer Music is a medium through which thoughts and feelings can be communicated without a single word being spoken. On Friday evening, September 27, 2019, the Philip Lorenz International Keyboard Series and the Fresno State Armenian Studies Program organized a concert by a talented pianist, Sofya Melikyan, and gave us another reason to believe that music is ...

Sosse Baloian Staff Writer The Armenian Studies Program Minor at Fresno State requires students to complete six to seven courses in Armenian language, art, culture, literature, and history. In the Fall of 2019 more than 30 students, an all-time high, have registered to complete their Minor in Armenian Studies. Dustin Vartanian Business Management What does pursuing a Minor in Armenian ...

  Arshak Abelyan Staff Writer “Having been a student here in my late teens and early childhood, I’ve spent my life at Fresno State, which has shaped me as a person, a student, and as a professional,” said Dr. Zhanna Bagdasarov Sahatjian. As an immigrant to the United States in 1995 from Uzbekistan, Dr. Sahatjian came directly to the city ...

Staff Report Armenian Studies Program Director Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian announced that the James L. Melikian & L.A. Brothers Scholarship fund has been newly established at Fresno State. A donation of $5,100 established the Scholarship, which will be awarded to deserving students studying in the Armenian Studies Program at Fresno State. The effort to establish the scholarship was led by ...

Staff Report The GRAMMY Museum® Grant Program announced that the Armenian Studies Program was awarded a $5,000 grant for 2019-2020.  The Armenian Studies Program was one of 15 recipients in the United States to receive a grant to help facilitate a range of research on a variety of subjects, as well as support a number of archiving and preservation programs. ...

Staff Report Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Member of the Board of the Saroyan House Museum, was invited to introduce the film Lights!Camera!Saroyan! to the St. Apkar Church community on July 25, 2019. Following the showing of the movie, community members expressed their interest in the Saroyan House Museum in Fresno.

Staff Report This year marked the second Fresno Institute for Classical Armenian Translation Summer Institute (FICAT). Following upon the success of last year’s FICAT institute held at Fresno State, the directors, Drs. Sergio La Porta and Michael Pifer, decided to lead students to work at the Matenadaran (the Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts) in Yerevan, Armenia this summer. The FICAT ...

  David Safrazian Staff Writer “Each time we sing a song, though it has been sung before, it is new,” said Aram Kerovpyan. Armenian church music was nearly completely torn away from its homeland since the Armenian Genocide in 1915. Musicologists Aram and Virginia Kerovpyan visited Fresno State on Wednesday, May 1, to present a new film, Singing in Exile, ...