Dr. Hrag Papazian Appointed as Kazan Visiting Professor for Fall

Staff Report

Dr. Hrag Papazian has been named as the 19th Henry S. Khanzadian Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies at Fresno State for the Fall 2022 semester. The Kazan Visiting Professorship was established in Fall of 2000.

Dr. Papazian graduated from the Social Anthropology MPhil program at the University of Oxford, and then continued with his DPhil studies at the same institution. His doctoral dissertation was on “Contesting Armenianness: Plurality, Segregation, and Multilateral Boundary Making among Armenians in Contemporary Turkey.”

Dr. Papazian was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and attended and graduated from Hamazkayin’s “Djemaran” College. He was very actively involved in Armenian community life since his early childhood, in cultural activities, sports, and community service.

As part of his duties as Kazan Visiting Professor, Dr. Papazian will be teaching a course “From Genocide to Post-Genocide Experience: Armenians under Late Ottoman and Turkish Republican Rule.” The goal of the course is to examine the history of the Armenian Genocide in the late Ottoman period and explore the fate of survivors who remained in the emerging Republic of Turkey until contemporary times.

Dr. Papazian’s research interests focus on issues of identity, group formation, inter-group relations, ethnicity, nationalism, diaspora and transnationalism, and politics and conflict. His doctoral research was on Armenians in contemporary Turkey, but he has also been conducting research in Armenia during the past two years.

For the past academic year, Dr. Papazian has been a Promise Armenian Institute post-doctoral fellow in the department of anthropology at UCLA. He taught as an Adjunct Lecturer at the American University of Armenia from Fall 2019 to Spring 2021 and taught three courses there: “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology,” “Cultural Geography,” and “Research Methods.”

While at Fresno State, Dr. Papazian will give three public lectures, under the general title of “Armenians and ‘Other Armenians’ in Contemporary Turkey.” The first lecture of the series on “The Christian Armenian Community,” was held on Friday, September 9. The second lecture, on Friday, October 7, will be on “Muslim and Alevi Armenians,” who have been getting more and more vocal and visible during the past few decades in Turkey. The third lecture on “The Migrants from Armenia,” on Tuesday, November 1, will examine the recently emerged community of migrant Armenians arriving from the Republic of Armenia since the early 1990s.

Throughout his lectures, Dr. Papazian will be also discussing relations between these different factions of Armenians in contemporary Turkey.

For information about Dr. Papazian’s lectures please follow Armenian Studies on its Facebook page, @ArmenianStudiesFresnoState or visit the Armenian Studies Program website, https://cah.fresnostate.edu/armenianstudies/index.html.