News

Michael Rettig Staff Writer History plays an important role in helping people understand their identity. It enables one to understand the experiences of their ancestors and how they have shaped our contemporary world. Students in Professor Sergio La Porta’s Armenian Studies108B course, a survey of modern Armenian history, have been able to better understand the present situation of the Armenian ...

Tadeh Issakhanian Staff Writer Fresno State’s Leon S. Peters Ellipse Gallery, located on the second floor of the Henry Madden Library, has been transformed into a retrospective exhibition of artwork by the pioneering 20th century Turkish-Armenian artist Kristin Saleri. Curated by Fresno natives Joyce Kierejczyk and Carol Tikijian, “Discovering Kristin Saleri” presents students and the community with a unique glimpse ...

Michael Rettig Staff Writer The vehement denial of the Armenian Genocide on the part of the government of the Republic of Turkey has led to the falsification and distortion of history. Scholarship and the use of primary sources are vital tools in countering this misinformation. Studying the accounts of politicians, missionaries, and soldiers and how they corroborate with each other, ...

Diana Gasparyan Staff Writer The Armenian Studies Program at Fresno State offers many opportunities for students and the public to learn about Armenian history and culture through its Armenian Studies Lecture Series and the Kazan Visiting Professorship. The Henry S. Khanzadian Kazan Visiting Professorship provides support that allows the Armenian Studies Program to invite an internationally recognized scholar in contemporary ...

Staff Report On February 16, 2016, Dr. Sergio La Porta lectured on the Armenian Genocide at Sonoma State University. Sponsored by the Alliance for the Study of Holocaust and Genocide and the Armenian Genocide Memorial Lecture Fund seeded by the Thomas Family Foundation, the lecture forms part of the Holocaust and Genocide Lecture Series organized by the Center for the ...

Staff Report Armenian Studies Program Coordinator Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian announced that the Bertha and John Garabedian Foundation has made a generous donation of $12,000 to the Armenian Studies Program for 2016. This brings the total donations from the Foundation to the Armenian Studies Program to over $100,000. The gift will be used for a variety of activities, including student ...

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: ...