About lectures
Two lectures will be given by George Bournoutian.
The first lecture deals with the murder of Griboedov in Tehran and the sending of an Iranian prince with a letter of apology and gifts to Tsar Nicholas. The Iranian mission traveled through Armenia, Georgia and Russia. The travel journal (in Persian) is an important document of the geopolitical conditions of the Caucasus and Russia in 1829–right after Russia took over eastern Armenia from Iran.
The second lecture concentrates on the very rare Russian surveys of the khanates of Sheki (1819), Shirvan (1820), Karabagh (1823) and Yerevan-Nakhichevan (1828-1832) in describing the population, land tenure and taxation of Transcaucasia during the Iranian domination.
George Bournoutian was born in Iran in 1943, immigrated to the US in 1964. Received his Ph.D in Armenian, Iranian and Russian history from UCLA in 1976. After he taught at Columbia University, New York University, Tufts University, UCLA, Rutgers University, University of Connecticut and California State University at Fresno (all visiting professor).
He is currently Senior Professor of History at Iona College in New York. He is the author and translator of some 30 books and 3 dozen articles in scholarly journals. His Concise History of the Armenian People (in its 6th edition) was the first comprehensive one-volume history in English and is used in many colleges in the US, Canada and Australia. It has been translated into Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Armenian and Russian. A Japanese version is due at the end of this year and a Persian translation is in the works.
Bournoutian’s doctoral research was conducted at the Matenadaran under the late Dr. Papazyan during an IREX Fellowship in Armenia 1973-1974. He visited Armenia for the first time in 1968 and has continued to do so for more than 20 times.
This event is in English. No interpretation will be provided. This event is open to public.