LIVE! Colloquium on Genocide & Literature: Israeli and Armenian Comparative Perspectives

The American University of Armenia (AUA ) College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) will be hosting a two-day public colloquium on genocide and literature with colleagues from Israel. On the opening day, speakers Dr. Harutyun Marutyan and Ora Ahimeir will discuss comparative perspectives.

Dr. Harutyun Marutyan is a leading researcher at the Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies in the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, and Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Yerevan State University. Born in 1956, he was educated at YSU (History Department, M.A., 1978) and the Institute of Ethnography, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, in Moscow (Ph.D., 1984). He received his second Ph.D. in 2007 at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Yerevan. He is an IREX/RSEP (Michigan University, 1998), Fulbright (MIT, 2003-2004), and DAAD alumni (Berlin, 2013) alumnus. In 2009-2010, he was Diane and Howard Wohl Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC). 

He is a recipient of the President of the Republic of Armenia Prize (2011) in the nomination of persons having made a valuable contribution to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide for his methodologically innovative research into the continuity of the memory of the Armenian Genocide, and its relationship with the Karabagh Movement.

Ora Ahimeir, is a novelist and editor, founder and former director of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. She was born in Jerusalem in 1941, and studied Hebrew literature and history and has a diploma in business administration from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After working at the Israeli embassy in London, and later as attaché for women’s affairs at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, she was the coordinator of the Prime Minister’s Commission on the status of women in Israel. Ahimeir was one of the founders of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, and served as its director for 31 years, until 2010. She also initiated and was the editor of many research books and publications on Jerusalem and other subjects, both in Hebrew and in English. Ahimeir is active in public committees for social, cultural and educational causes. In 2011, she received an Honor Citation from the city of Jerusalem for her contribution to the city. Her novel “Bride”, has been awarded the Book Publishers Association’s Gold Prize (2014). 

Her new Hebrew novel on the Armenian genocide is due in October 2016.