Rutgers to Offer Course on Nagorno-Karabagh

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.—A course entitled “Conflicts in the Caucusus: Ethnic Separatist Movements in Comparative Perspective” will be offered this coming fall at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The course will provide an overview to ethnic and separatist conflicts in Abkhazia, Chechnya, Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabagh, with Karabagh used as a case study and primary focus of the course. The course will be offered on Monday evenings from 6:10-9 p.m. on the College Avenue campus.

John Antranig Kasbarian, who holds a Ph.D. in geography from Rutgers, will instruct the course. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the geography of nationalism during the recent war in Karabagh, based in large part on his own experiences on the ground. The work is entitled “We Are Our Mountains: The Geography of Nationalism in the Armenian Self-Determination Movement, Nagorno-Karabakh: 1988-98.” Kasbarian has published widely on Karabagh in both academic journals and the press. A former journalist, he is active in Armenian affairs and currently works as development director for the New York-based Tufenkian Foundation, supervising activities in Karabagh that focus on small business development, economic recovery programs, and refugee resettlement.