ADMISSION: 
Admission is free. RSVP required. 

RSVP 

DESCRIPTION: 
In light of the ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population of Artsakh, the USC Institute of Armenian Studies is hosting a daylong symposium featuring prominent figures from academia, the arts, and civil society, who will share their firsthand experiences of conflict, life under blockade, and dispossession. 

The lineup will feature voices from Artsakh and showcase groundbreaking work on various forms of dispossession—physical, cultural, and psychological—by scholars across diverse academic disciplines, as well as a rap performance, film screening, cooking demonstration, and photo exhibit.

Speakers will include: 

> Sebouh Aslanian, Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History at UCLA 
> Stephan Astourian, Director of the Turpanjian Center for Policy Analysis at the American University of Armenia 
> Artak Beglaryan, Former State Minister of Artsakh 
> Mohamed El-Naggar, Interim Dean of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences  
> Ashot Gabrielyan, Citizen Journalist and Educator 
> Hannah Garry, Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA 
> Rober Koptas, Author and Former USC Institute of Armenian Studies Visiting Scholar
> Josh Kun, USC Vice Provost for the Arts and Professor and Chair in Cross-Cultural Communication
> Viet Thanh Nguyen, USC’s Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Pulitzer Prize–winning Author of The Sympathizer 
> Valentina Ogaryan, Clinical Director at the Simms Mann Center for Integrative Oncology at UCLA 
> Hrag Papazian, USC Turpanjian Early Career Chair in Contemporary Armenian Studies 
> Nina Shahverdyan, Educator and Graduate Student at Columbia University
> Gegham Stepanyan, Former Human Rights Ombudsman of Artsakh 

Cultural programming: 

> Live performance by Lyoka, a war veteran and rapper from Artsakh 
> Preview of the feature documentary There Was, There Was Not by filmmaker, multimedia artist, and interdisciplinary creative collaborator Emily Mkrtichian 
> Cooking demonstration by local eatery Zhengyalov Hatz, which derives its name from Artsakh’s national dish 
> Photo exhibit by photographers who have documented the displacement of the people of Artsakh 

Presented by the USC Dornsife Institue of Armenian Studies. Co-sponsored by Visions and Voices.