FRESNO — Dr. Simon Maghakyan, the 20th Kazan Visiting Professor of Armenian Studies at Fresno State, will speak on “The Past of the Past: Armenian Heritage in Ottoman and Republican Turkey” at 7:00PM on Friday, September 27, 2024, in the University Business Center (5245 N Backer Ave.), Alice Peters Auditorium, on the Fresno State campus.
The presentation will address the Ottoman Empire’s and the pre-Erdogan Turkish Republic’s approaches to Armenian cultural heritage as reflective of broader policies towards Armenians, highlighting a mixed record of destruction, dispossession, and accommodation. It will dissect the securitization of and subsequent state-sanctioned heritage crime against religious-cultural sites starting in the 19th century, policies that escalated during and even after the WWI-era Armenian Genocide.
Dr. Simon Maghakyan is a political scientist who researches heritage and security. He is the 20th Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies at California State University, Fresno, a Community Scholar at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford. Previously, he was affiliated with Tufts University, the University of Colorado, Denver, and Cranfield University, where he earned a PhD in Defense and Security, focusing on heritage crime. His practical experiences range from founding Heritage Intel consultancy to spearheading Colorado’s capitol genocide memorial. His publications include a Hyperallergic exposé of Nakhichevan’s cultural erasure, acclaimed as “groundbreaking” by Forbes and “rock-solid” by The Guardian. His analyses have been featured by the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Time. His forthcoming book, Sovereign Heritage Crime: Security, Autocracy, and the Material Past, is a critical heritage studies element of Cambridge University Press.
The presentation is free and open to the public. Free parking is available in Fresno State Lot P6, near the University Business Center. Parking permits are not required on Friday nights.
The presentation will also be live-streamed on YouTube at: https://bit.ly/armenianstudiesyoutube.
For information about upcoming Armenian Studies Program presentations, please follow us on our Facebook page, @ArmenianStudiesFresnoState or at the Program website, https://fresnostate.edu/armenianstudies.
