Book Launch of Everyday Cosmopolitanisms: Living the Silk Road In Medieval Armenia

The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and the Armenian Institute (London) will present a book launch and discussion of Dr. Kate Franklin’s groundbreaking study Everyday Cosmopolitanisms: Living the Silk Road in Medieval Armenia, on Sunday, October 31, 2021, at 1:00 p.m. (Eastern). The program will be accessible live on Zoom (registration required) and on NAASR’s YouTube Channel.

While the Silk Road is widely studied, hotly debated, and often viewed as a precursor to contemporary globalization, the lives of ordinary people who lived on these nexuses of intercontinental exchange. Dr. Franklin sets out to correct this picture, guiding the reader through increasingly intimate scales of global exchange to highlight the cosmopolitan dimensions of daily life, as she vividly reconstructs how people living in and passing through the medieval Caucasus understood the world and their place within it.

With innovative focus on the far-reaching implications of local practices, Everyday Cosmopolitanisms (Univ. of California Press) brings the study of medieval Eurasia into relation with contemporary discussions of cosmopolitanism and globalization, and challenges persistent divisions between modern and medieval, global and local.

The open-access publication of Everyday Cosmopolitanisms has been supported by a grant from NAASR and the Knights of Vartan Fund for Armenian Studies.

For this evening Dr. Franklin will be in conversation with Armenian Institute’s Dr. Nik Matheou, a historian of medieval Armenia working on the same themes and materials, followed by a general Q&A.

For more information contact NAASR at hq@naasr.org.