Khatchig Mouradian to speak at NAASR on “The Armenian Memory Book (Houshamadean) as Artifact and Road Map”

November 5, 2024 NAASR Diaspora, Announcements 0

The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will host an in-person and online illustrated lecture by Dr. Khatchig Mouradian titled “Recreating Home in Exile: The Armenian Memory Book (Houshamadean) as Artifact and Road Map,” on Thursday, November 14, 2024, at 7:30 p.m. (Eastern) / 4:30 p.m. (Pacific), at the NAASR Vartan Gregorian Building, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA.

The program will be presented in memory of long-serving NAASR Board member Shushan Yeni-Komshian Teager (1931-2024). It is free and open to the public and a reception will follow the program.

This will be an in-person event and also presented online live via Zoom (registration: https://bit.ly/3TJjCtS) and YouTube (www.youtube.com/c/ArmenianStudies).

Mouradian will explore the memorial book as a literary genre, art and artifact. Guided by published and unpublished works and more than 20 research trips and pilgrimages to the very spaces the books celebrate and memorialize, Mouradian reflects on the agency of the houshamadeans and their enduring legacy.

Dr. Khatchig Mouradian

“Every home opened its doors to me save for my ancestral abode,” wrote Armenian poet Mushegh Ishkhan in 1936. His was a generation of genocide survivors forced out of their homeland and scattered around the globe. A yearning to reenact erased histories and recreate inaccessible geographies — tucked behind the borders of Turkey — defined many of their lives and pursuits. The literary genre of the memory book (houshamadean in Armenian) emerged from this cauldron: more than 300 published titles (and many unpublished ones) dedicated to Armenian-populated regions, towns or villages in the Ottoman Empire were produced in the Armenian Diaspora since the 1920s.

Dr. Khatchig Mouradian is Armenian and Georgian Area Specialist at the Library of Congress and a lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918 and a member of the NAASR Board of Directors and Academic Advisory Committee. His article “Recreating Home in Exile: The Armenian Memory Book as Art, Artefact, and Roadmap” is forthcoming in a special issue of the journal Wasafiri, guest co-edited by Tatevik Ayvazyan and Naneh V Hovhannisyan.

Shushan Teager

Shushan Teager was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1931 to Helen (Krajian) Yeni-Komshian (1911-2005) of Aintab and Dr. Hovsep Yeni-Komshian (1895-1994) of Kilis. A long-serving member of NAASR’s Board of Directors, she was also dedicated volunteer and invaluable resource at NAASR’s Mardigian Library, where she took a special interest in raising awareness of the collection of houshamadeans and acted as unofficial ambassador while selflessly offering her own time, knowledge and fluency in several languages in order to assist researchers. NAASR invites all to join us in honoring her memory and extraordinary life.

For more information about this program, contact NAASR at hq@naasr.org.

NAASR

NAASR

Founded in 1955, NAASR is one of the world’s leading resources for advancing Armenian Studies, supporting scholars, and building a global community to preserve and enrich Armenian culture, history, and identity for future generations.

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