Marc Mamigonian to Present “Gaslighting the World: How Azerbaijan Falsifies History and Denies Armenian Existence” in Hybrid Event at NAASR Center

BELMONT, MA — The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will host an in-person and online lecture by Marc A. Mamigonian titled “Gaslighting the World: How Azerbaijan Falsifies History and Denies Armenian Existence,” on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, at 7:30 p.m. (Eastern) / 4:30 (Pacific), at the NAASR Vartan Gregorian Building, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA.

The program will be presented as the 5th Annual Prof. Charles B. Garabedian Lecture at NAASR and is also offered under the auspices of the NAASR / Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lecture Series on Contemporary Armenian Issues.

This will be an in-person event and also presented online live via Zoom (Registration: https://bit.ly/3ZAxZVe) and YouTube (www.youtube.com/c/ArmenianStudies).

The three modern nation states of the South Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, are effectively the same age. Whereas Georgia and Armenia have ancient national churches, large corpora of historical texts dating back to the early centuries of the Christian/Common era, and centuries-long existences as collective entities or ethne, as Stephan Astourian has written, “the Azerbaijani sense of nationhood is fragile” and “combines the image of the Armenian enemy with a narrative of victimization to forge a national identity.”

A key element of this process of identity formation, which may be characterized as equal parts Freudian and Orwellian, is the reflexive negation of all things Armenian: millennia of Armenian presence in the region, the Armenian Genocide, Armenian cultural monuments in territory today controlled by Azerbaijan, and the legitimacy of the Republic of Armenia.  While such tendencies have been visible for decades, today’s Azerbaijani petro-dictatorship engages in triumphalist anti-Armenian denial that is fueled by its military victories in 2020 and 2023 and aims at a kind of humiliation cum eradication of Armenia and Armenians that demands closer analysis of its rhetoric and impact as well as those in media, academia, think-tanks, and NGOs who enable it.

Marc A. Mamigonian is the Director of Academic Affairs of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), where he has worked since 1998. He is the co-author of the volume Annotations to James Joyce’s Ulysses (Oxford Univ. Press, 2022; with John N. Turner and Sam Slote), is the editor of the volume The Armenians of New England (Armenian Heritage Press, 2004) and co-editor with Thomas Kühne and Mary Jane Rein of Documenting the Armenian Genocide: Essays in Honor of Taner Akçam (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

Professor Charles B. Garabedian (1917-1991) was born in Everett, Mass., and graduated magna cum laude from Everett High School and Tufts University (A.B. English and History).  He attended Harvard Law School and graduated magna cum laude from Boston University Law School.  During World War II he served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and in the late 1940s he began his teaching career at Suffolk University Law School.  His expertise was tort litigation and damages, courses which he continuously taught at Suffolk University Law School for over 40 years.  At the time of his death, Professor Garabedian was the Senior Faculty Professor at Suffolk University Law School.  The annual lecture in his memory has been established at NAASR by Prof. Garabedian’s niece, NAASR Board Member Joan E. Kolligian.

For more information about this program, contact NAASR at hq@naasr.org.