Janigian to Speak at NAASR on ‘Exile, Memory, and Assimilation’
BELMONT, Mass.—Noted writer Aris Janigian, author of the acclaimed novel This Angelic Land, will give a lecture entitled “Exile, Memory, and Assimilation: The Armenian Experience as the Essential American Experience,” on Thurs., March 14, at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) in Belmont. The lecture is co-sponsored by the AGBU-YP Boston and NAASR, and is given in recognition of Emmanuel P. Varandyan (1902-88), a novelist (The Well of Ararat, The Moon Sails), professor of English literature at Ohio State University, NAASR board member and benefactor, and tireless advocate for Armenian studies.
Aris Janigian is considered one of the most important Armenian-American novelists working today. Each of his three critically acclaimed novels, Bloodvine, Riverbig, and This Angelic Land, places ethnic Armenian characters against the backdrop of the American cultural landscape. The first two novels are set in the Central Valley of California in the early 1960’s, and the third, This Angelic Land, published last May, is set during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. In tapping themes of exile, memory, and assimilation, Janigian uses the Armenian experience as a lens through which to explore the central American experience. In that context, critic D. J. Waldie of the Los Angeles Review of Books has called This Angelic Land, “Today’s necessary book.”
Holding a Ph.D. in psychology, from 1993 to 2005, Janigian was senior professor of humanities at Southern California Institute of Architecture. He has published in genres as diverse as poetry, social psychology, and design criticism. Aside from his novels, he is co-author along with April Greiman of Something from Nothing, a book on the philosophy of graphic design.
Janigian was also a contributing writer to West, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, a finalist for the William Saroyan Fiction Prize, and the recipient of the Anahid Literary Award from Columbia University. He is a contributing writer for www.thenervousbreakdown.com, and lives in Los Angeles.
The lecture begins at 8 p.m. at NAASR, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont. For more information, call (617) 489-1610, fax (617) 484-1759, or e-mail hq@naasr.org.
