The 11th session in a series of conferences on Armenian culture
took place this past weekend on campus, enlightening both students
and members of the surrounding community to the little-known
history of the city of Smyrna.
Sessions took place in Young Hall on Saturday and Sunday and
featured authorities on Armenian history from around the world.
The conferences were organized by Richard Hovannisian, a
professor in the UCLA history department for 40 years.
Hovannisian, the Armenian Educational Foundation chair in Modern
Armenian History, has run the conference bi-annually every May and
November since 1997.
“It’s a very important campus and outreach
event,” said Hovannisian. “It binds the university to
the surrounding community.”
The conferences deal with the history of the Armenian
communities from 13th century B.C. to the end of the Armenian
genocide in the early 1920s.
The Armenian Genocide was a series of killings said to have
taken place from 1915 to 1922 during which 1.5 million Armenians
were killed by the Ottoman Turks. However, neither the Turkish nor
American governments recognize that the events ever occurred.
This weekend’s seminars focused on the Ottoman
Empire’s genocidal impact on the coastal community of Smyrna,
or what is known as Izmir, Turkey today.
Speakers gave presentations on all different aspects of Armenian
life in Smyrna, including dialect, architecture and effects on
American literature.
Marjorie Housepian Dobkin of Barnard College in New York spoke
on the burning of Smyrna in 1922, an event in which the Turkish
army was said to have pillaged and burned the city as Western
powers looked on.
The burning marked the end of Christian presence in the region,
as thousands of Armenians were allegedly killed or cast to sea,
where they would find no help from American warships.
Dobkin read one American soldier’s account of the event to
the conference attendees: “The spectacle along the waterfront
haunted me for the rest of my life.”
Other topics included Smyrna’s impact on Ernest Hemingway
and Henry Miller, Smyrnian refugees in South America, and the
dialect of the region.
An estimated 250 people attended Saturday, with about 200 in
attendance Sunday, with a majority of community members and some
UCLA students.
Anna Abolian, a second-year physical sciences student, said,
“It’s a great opportunity for people not as familiar
with their roots to learn. Even if you aren’t Armenian, you
can learn so much.”
Arminee Izakelian, a fourth-year microbiology student, helped
sell books on Smyrna written by speakers of the conference.
“It’s important to broaden your horizons and get to
know different kinds of people,” she said.