The Armenian Graduate Students Association held its sixth annual colloquium on Friday afternoon ““ an event that featured speakers from domestic and international universities in panels pertaining to topics in Armenian studies.
This year, graduate students attended from Armenia, Hungary, Germany and Turkey; as well as from University of California, Irvine and California State University, Northridge.
The topics discussed were “art and architecture,” “identity construction in the diaspora,” “ritual and cultural performance,” and “narrative and community.”
“There is no other event like this in the world,” Raffi Kassabian, executive director of the Armenian Graduate Students Association said. “This (was) organized by grad students for grad students.”
Panelists presented from thesis papers and PowerPoint presentations. After the conclusion of each panel, audience members were invited to ask the panelists questions about their research.
Arpi Siyahian, a member of the association’s organizing committee, said the themes of the colloquium vary every year.
“We do a call for papers among universities with Armenian studies,” she said.
After the papers are collected, the committee does a “blind aspect,” in which the names of the authors of the papers are removed. The committee evaluates the material and invites the top 10 graduate students to UCLA to speak.
Kassabian, a law student as UCLA, said the association is a mentorship for both undergraduate and graduate students.
He said events like the colloquium add to the dimension of Armenian studies, which, as shown by the diverse topics and speakers at the colloquium, is a very interdisciplinary major.
The committee hopes to expand the colloquium, perhaps to a two-day conference next year, Siyahian said.
Attendees at the colloquium ranged from UCLA professors to alumni.
“My old Armenian studies professor sent me an e-mail (about the colloquium),” said David Abrahamian, a UCLA Class of 2007 alumnus. “There are some unbelievable topics and interesting analysis here.”
In panelist Anna Harutyunyan’s paper, “Cultural Diversity and Belongingness,” she specifically focused her analysis on the identity crisis of Armenian communities in Berlin. She said while Armenians identify strongly with their culture, they have difficulty naming Armenia or Germany as their homeland.
She added that she also had this crisis, as she is Armenian but grew up in Berlin.
An audience member asked if intermarriage between Armenians and non-Armenians existed in a country where Armenians were the minority culture.
Harutyunyan replied that while it was not common, intermarriage did occur.
Abrahamian added that before entering UCLA, he did not speak the Armenian language well at all.
“Now I love topics like these,” he said.