The American University of Armenia (AUA ) College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) will be hosting a two-day public colloquium on genocide and literature with colleagues from Israel. On the opening day, speakers Dr. Harutyun Marutyan and Ora Ahimeir will discuss comparative perspectives.
Dr. Harutyun Marutyan is a leading researcher at the Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies in the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, and Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Yerevan State University. Born in 1956, he was educated at YSU (History Department, M.A., 1978) and the Institute of Ethnography, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, in Moscow (Ph.D., 1984). He received his second Ph.D. in 2007 at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Yerevan. He is an IREX/RSEP (Michigan University, 1998), Fulbright (MIT, 2003-2004), and DAAD alumni (Berlin, 2013) alumnus. In 2009-2010, he was Diane and Howard Wohl Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC).
He is a recipient of the President of the Republic of Armenia Prize (2011) in the nomination of persons having made a valuable contribution to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide for his methodologically innovative research into the continuity of the memory of the Armenian Genocide, and its relationship with the Karabagh Movement.
Ora Ahimeir, is a novelist and editor, founder and former director of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. She was born in Jerusalem in 1941, and studied Hebrew literature and history and has a diploma in business administration from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After working at the Israeli embassy in London, and later as attaché for women’s affairs at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, she was the coordinator of the Prime Minister’s Commission on the status of women in Israel. Ahimeir was one of the founders of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, and served as its director for 31 years, until 2010. She also initiated and was the editor of many research books and publications on Jerusalem and other subjects, both in Hebrew and in English. Ahimeir is active in public committees for social, cultural and educational causes. In 2011, she received an Honor Citation from the city of Jerusalem for her contribution to the city. Her novel “Bride”, has been awarded the Book Publishers Association’s Gold Prize (2014).
Her new Hebrew novel on the Armenian genocide is due in October 2016.
The two-day colloquium has been organized by AUA visiting Professor Yair Auron.
Professor Auron has served as the head of the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication at the Open University of Israel. Auron received his MA from the Hebrew University and his Ph.D from the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. He has been a strong advocate of raising awareness of the Armenian Genocide in Israel and has published a series of books in Hebrew and English on various major cases of genocide, including one on the Armenian Genocide earlier this year. As part of his time at AUA, Professor Auron has been making visits to other institutions around Armenia, including the UWC Dilijan College, where he gave a lecture on genocide to the students, academic staff, and Dilijan locals.
April 14
Schedule:
9:00-11:00 – Panel 1 – Moderator – Catherine Buon
Arto Vaun – Standing in the Doorway: The Poet Between Languages, Between Worlds
Yael Ben-Zvi Morad – Autobiographie de personne: Perceptions of Human Identity in Autobiographies by Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants
Khachik Gasparyan – Psychotraumatic Elements of Armenian Identity: Loss and
Recovery
Roy Greenwald – The Transmissibility of Violence: The Pogrom Stories of Lamed Shapiro
11:30-13:00 – Panel 2 – Moderator – Greg Areshian
Haim Weis – The Bar Kosibah revolt and the Rewriting of National Tragedy
Dr. Ashot Voskanyan – Two ways to speak about the Armenian Genocide: Is the genocide trauma insurmountable?
Dr. Peter Sh. Lehnardt – “God, Do Not Be Silent Over My Blood’ – Narrative and Poetic Responses to the Persecution of Jewish communities during the First Crusade
14:30-16:00 – Panel 3 – Moderator – Tom Samuelian
Dr. Siranush Dvoyan -The Crisis of Identity in Diaspora-Armenian Literature.
Dr. Amos Goldberg – Three Forms of Post-Genocidal Violence in Beni Wircberg’s Memoir
Dr. Vahram Danielyan – Kars as a Novel Space According the Novels of Orhan Pamuk and Yeghishe Charents
16:30-18:00 – Presentation by Ora Ahimeir, From Aleppo to Jerusalem – a quest for refuge and rest – the writer’s view
18:00 – Closing Remarks
Biography of Israeli speakers:
Amos Goldberg is a senior lecturer in Holocaust studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His major fields of research are cultural history of the Jews in the Holocaust, Holocaust historiography, and Holocaust memory in a global world. His book on diary writing during the Holocaust came out by Heksherin in 2012, and he is currently writing a book on post-Holocaust Jewish memoirs.
Dr. Yael Ben-Zvi Morad is a researcher of Israeli and Palestinian Cinema and Literature. She teaches at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and is the author of the books Patricide: Gender and Nationalism in Palestinian Cinema and Wedding in the Snow.
Dr. Peter Sh. Lehnardt, senior lecturer of Hebrew Medieval Literature with research focuses on Hebrew liturgical poetry and secular genres common to majority cultures of the Christian hemisphere around the Mediterranean.
Dr. Haim Weiss is a senior lecturer at the department of Hebrew literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. His main field of research is Rabbinic literature and currently he is writing a book on the image of Simon Bar-Kosibah (better known as Bar Kochva) in Jewish history and culture.
Roy Greenwald teaches Modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He work currently on the literary presentations of the Pogroms in Yiddish and Hebrew Literature of the late 19th and the early 20th century.
Ora Ahimeir is a novelist and editor, founder and former director of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Her new Hebrew novel on the Armenian genocide is due in October 2016.
Participants from Armenia:
Dr. Siranush Dvoyan Lecturer, Yerevan State University, American University of Armenia
Dr. Vahram Danielyan Lecturer, Yerevan State University, American University of Armenia
Dr. Khachatur Gasparyan Director, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Care Project, Armenian Association of Child Psychiatrists and Psychologists; Lecturer, American University of Armenia
Dr. Ashot Voskanyan Lecturer, American University of Armenia, Adviser, RA Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Asia-Pacific and Africa Department
Sr. Lect. Arto Vaun Senior Lecturer, American University of Armenia, Editor, Locomotive literary journal.
Dr. Gregory Areshyan Prof., History & Archeology, American University of Armenia
Dr. Catherine Buon Assoc. Dean, General Education, American University of Armenia
Dr. Harutyun Marutyan Academy of Sciences, Sr. Researcher, Department of Ethnography and Archaeology, Visiting Prof. Yerevan State University
Dr. Thomas Samuelian CHSS Dean, American University of Armenia
Organizer: College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Phone: +374 10 32-40-40
Email: info@aua.am
Venue: Alex and Marie Manoogian Hall
