News

Dustin Vartanian President What would you like to accomplish as an officer? I want our members to feel how I did when I first got involved in ASO. When I first got involved, I established a great group of friends and I always looked forward to every event we had. My goal is to make everyone feel as welcomed as ...

  Carina Tokatian Staff Writer “The ghosts, the people from our Armenian past, the things they endured, the unprecedented suffering and losses they bore, as well as their will to overcome—all of that shaped our outlook and our lives” stated Jack Chavoor, a May 2020 graduate of Fresno State’s MFA Creative Writing Program. Since the very beginning of his thesis, ...

Staff Report We digitized, now what? To answer that question, the Armenian Studies Program (ASP) was recently awarded a grant from California Revealed, a California State Library initiative, which will facilitate making the Program’s digitized collection of local Armenian-American music available online to the public. The grant supports processing and cataloging the materials collected during the public memory event, “Armenian-American ...

  Sosse Ann Baloian Staff Writer The Armenian Studies Program kicked off its first Zoom lecture in the Armenian Studies Program Fall Lecture Series on Thursday, September 3, 2020 by welcoming Dr. Christina Maranci to discuss her artistic interpretations of the Cathedral of Ani, in a talk entitled “Ani Cathedral, Its Sculpture, and Its Inscriptions Revisited.” Dr. Maranci acknowledged that ...

  Carina Tokatian Staff Writer “Observe your surroundings before looking afar” was the sagacious advice that Armenian-American writer Bedros Keljik recalled his schoolteacher, Hovhanness Tlgadinsti, imparting to his students. In his Armenian-American Sketches (Amerigahay Badgerner), Keljik’s writing stands as a manifestation of this maxim; he invites his readers to enter the vivid culture surrounding his experiences as an Armenian-American. On ...

  Arshak Abelyan Staff Writer The conscription of Christians and other non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire had been a topic of consistent debate within the 19th and early 20th centuries. Following the restoration of the constitutional regime in July 1908, Armenians were optimistic of this new push for equality in Ottoman society. “One of the important requirements of this political ...

  Christine Pambukyan Staff Writer Dr. Tamar M. Boyadjian, Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at Michigan State University, teaches poetry and translation courses. Along with her teaching, Dr. Boyadjian is also an active scholar and wrote an award-winning book titled, The City of Lament: Jerusalem Across the Medieval Mediterranean in 2018. On Thursday, September 24, 2020, Dr. Boyadjian evaluated how ...

  Dustin Vartanian Staff Writer Listen up, the “All Things Armenian” radio program has been on the air for more than a year. Tune in to hear interviews with interesting members of the Armenian community and to hear about the upcoming events planned by the Armenian Studies Program at Fresno State. “All Things Armenian” has gained popularity and is now ...

  Ara Sarafian Special to Hye Sharzhoom On 12 September 2013, a “Monument to Common Conscience” was erected in Diyarbakir. An unassuming structure made of wood, breezeblocks, marble, and plastic, it contained a simple message in six languages (one of which was Armenian): “Let us share each other’s pains so that they are not repeated again.” The ambiguous simplicity of ...

Carina Tokatian Staff Writer “You don’t necessarily think of traditional Armenian music in the United States as having such complex roots because we are so familiar with it—but it does. It is interesting to put a spotlight on these aspects of life that we are familiar with but may take for granted,” stated Malina Zakian, archivist for the Armenian Studies ...