Nareg Seferian appointed Ordjanian Visiting Professor at Columbia for Spring 2026
Dr. Nareg Seferian has been appointed the Nikit and Eleanora Ordjanian Visiting Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University for the Spring of 2025. He will be teaching a course titled “Geography as World-Writing.”
The course is about space and power. If “geography” is literally “world-writing,” then who is doing the writing, how and why? Where is the line (the border!) between neutral, descriptive writing about the world and agenda-driven, ascriptive writing upon the world? Moreover, who is the reader of the so-written world? How and why is it to be read? This course invites students to think more deeply about those questions, taking on concepts and categories from the literature of geography, political geography and geographical imaginations, as well as classical geopolitics and critical geopolitics. Various cases will inform the material of this course — the United States, China, India, Serbia, Senegal, Kenya and the Middle East more broadly, with some emphasis on Armenia and Azerbaijan and the conflict over Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh.
The course (MDES UN3345) will be taught on Wednesdays from 4:10 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. It is open to auditors as well as matriculating students. Registration for Auditors and Lifelong Learners may be done online here. On this page, scroll down to the “Application Materials” section to find the Online Application Form link. For enrollment help, please call (212) 854-9666.
Nareg Seferian’s research and writing lie at the nexus of international relations and political geography, with a focus on Armenia, the Caucasus, Turkey, Eurasia and the Middle East. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech, in 2023. Seferian’s dissertation examined the shifting geographical imaginations and geopolitical culture of Armenia after the Second Karabakh War, taking the province of Syunik as a case study.
Seferian has taught at the American University of Armenia (2013-2016), Virginia Tech (2019-2023) and Hampden-Sydney College (2024-2025). He received his graduate education in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, following undergraduate studies at St. John’s College (Santa Fe, New Mexico) and Yerevan State University.
Born and raised in New Delhi in an Armenian family from Lebanon and Syria, Nareg Seferian developed an organic interest in learning about the histories, cultures, languages and conflicts around the world. He has lived, studied and worked in India, Armenia, the United States, Austria, Turkey and Brazil. His publications are available at naregseferian.com.
The Ordjanian Visiting Professorship program at Columbia is made possible by an endowment established by the late Dr. Nikit and Eleanora Ordjanian in 1988. Previous Ordjanian Visiting Professors have included Levon Abrahamian, Vardan Azatyan, Peter Balakian, Melissa Bilal, George Bournoutian, Seta Dadoyan, Cevat Dargın, Roberta Ervine, Helen Evans, Rachel Goshgarian, Arman Grigoryan, Robert Hewsen, Nora Lessersohn, Ohannes Kılıçdağı, Armen Marsoobian, Khatchig Mouradian, Ara Sarafian and Khachig Tololyan.
The Ordjanian Visiting Professorship is one of several programs of the Armenian Center at Columbia, the organization that raised the initial funds to establish a Chair of Armenian Studies at Columbia in 1979 and which continues to provide funds for scholarships, library acquisitions, academic publications, lectures, conferences and symposia.
For more information about the Armenian Center at Columbia, please call Karen Bedrosian Richardson at (212) 949-1995. For more information on Dr. Seferian’s upcoming course, please contact him at ns4073@columbia.edu.
