YEREVAN, Armenia — The American University of Armenia (AUA) College of Humanities and Social Sciences is pleased to announce two new publications by Dr. Elitza Kotzeva, associate professor in the B.A. in English and Communications program. The two scholarly works examine the rhetorical life of material culture across different historical and cultural contexts.
Both publications explore how physical artifacts shape public memory, identity, ritual practice, and civic life. One article examines communist-era monuments in Bulgaria’s postcommunist urban landscape, while the other focuses on Armenian khachkars (cross-stones) as material, sacred, and rhetorical artifacts.
Dr. Kotzeva’s article, “From Admiring Death Masks to Spray-Painting Communist Monuments, or Citizens Revisiting Collective Memory,” appears in Historical Geography, a Scopus-indexed journal published by the University of Nebraska Press. The article analyzes performative events around communist monuments in Bulgaria as spatial practices that reshape collective memory and reconfigure urban space. Drawing on Kenneth Burke’s concept of transcendence, Dr. Kotzeva examines three case studies: the Mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov, the Banner of Peace Monument, and the Monument to the Soviet Army. The article argues that these monuments are not static remains of a political past, but dynamic sites where individual memory, state narratives, civic intervention, and public space intersect.
Rather than treating monuments only as symbols of communist ideology, the article considers how citizens engage with them through ritual, protest, artistic intervention, memory, and debate. These acts of engagement reveal the ongoing struggle over how the communist past is remembered, contested, or transformed in contemporary Bulgaria. By focusing on citizen participation in monument events, the article contributes to historical geography, memory studies, and rhetorical studies, showing how monuments function as active agents in the spatial politics of remembrance.
Dr. Kotzeva’s second publication, “Cross-Stones,” will appear in Writing Artifacts, a forthcoming edited collection from Routledge edited by Cydney Alexis and Hannah J. Rule. The chapter examines Armenian khachkars as material artifacts that mediate religious, civic, and communal life. Focusing especially on the khachkars at Noraduz cemetery, Dr. Kotzeva explores how these carved stones function as forms of visual literacy, cultural memory, and ritual practice. The chapter argues that khachkars are not only historical documents or sacred objects, but also rhetorical artifacts that continue to shape Armenian identity and connect past and present through inscription, storytelling, touch, ritual, and embodied practice.
The chapter draws on Daniel Miller’s theory of objectification to consider how people come to know themselves through objects, and it builds on rhetorical theory to show how artifacts can possess agency. Through engravings, oral legends, healing rituals, and everyday interactions at Noraduz, khachkars emerge as living participants in cultural continuity. They offer contemporary Armenians a way to enter into symbolic relation with their ancestors while affirming the khachkar’s enduring role as an Armenian identity symbol.
Together, the two publications reflect Dr. Kotzeva’s broader scholarly interest in the relationship between rhetoric, ideology, materiality, and memory. Her work asks how objects and built environments carry meaning across time, how communities engage with inherited material forms, and how artifacts become sites where cultural identity and public responsibility are negotiated.
Reflecting on the publications, Dr. Kotzeva said: “These two publications grow out of my interest in the ways material objects continue to shape public and cultural life long after the historical moments that produced them.Whether the object is a communist monument in Bulgaria or a khachkar in Armenia, I am interested in how people return to these artifacts, reinterpret them, and use them to think through questions of memory, identity, and communal belonging.”
Dr. Kotzeva’s research contributes to conversations in rhetorical studies, material culture studies, historical geography, memory studies, and writing studies. The two publications also reflect the regional range of her scholarship, which examines Eastern Europe, Armenia, and the broader postcommunist and post-Soviet spaces as important sites for theorizing rhetoric, public memory, and cultural practice.
Founded in 1991, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is a private, independent university located in Yerevan, Armenia, affiliated with the University of California, and accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) in the United States. AUA provides local and international students with Western-style education through top-quality undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs, promotes research and innovation, encourages civic engagement and community service, and fosters democratic values.