FRESNO — Dr. Abraham Terian will present his new book, “Phrasing the Arts,” at 7:00PM on Friday, September 25, 2026, in the Grosse Industrial Technology Building, Room 101 (2255 E. Barstow Ave.) on the Fresno State campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Phrasing the Arts is Volume 23 in the Armenian Series of The Press at California State University, Fresno. Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian, general editor of the Armenian Series, described the book as “a new approach to poetry and literature.”
Dr. Honora Howell Chapman, Dean, College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State stated, “Professor Abraham Terian achieves Horace’s ideal of ‘the poem is like a picture’ by depicting exquisite quotidian details through the lens of his remarkable scholarship on ancient literature. Inviting the reader to ‘crawl out of Plato’s cave’ and discover that people and places are ‘more than they seem’, Terian embarks on an odyssey across ‘history’s landscape’ from the streets of New York City to Armenia, Finland, Venice, Jerusalem, and Moscow, returning home to the magnificent ancient Sequoias, after dancing with ‘swift-footed nomads’ and seeking the ‘edge of the universe’. This collection inspires us all to look in the mirror once held by girls in Pompeii almost two thousand years ago and see not only the ‘brief moments of vanished tenderness’ but also the subtle and lasting beauty of the arts around us today.”
Dr. Abraham Terian is Professor Emeritus of Theology and Armenian Patristics, Saint Nersess Armenian Seminary, Armonk, NY. Teacher of ancient literatures for decades, he is the author of more than twelve books and scores of articles on diverse subjects from classical through medieval times (his two books on the works St. Gregory of Narek have received multiple awards). As a Fulbright Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2006, he became the first recipient of the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities award. In 2008 he was elected a diasporan Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, and in 2016 a Fellow of the Ambrosian Academy of Milan. In 2018 – 2019 he was Robert F. and Margaret S. Goheen Fellow in Classical Philosophy at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He lives in Fresno with his wife Sara, a native of Finland and retired Professor of Sociology.
Admission to the presentation is free and free parking is available in Fresno State Lot P23 or P20, near the Industrial Technology building. Parking permits are not required for Friday night presentations.
Phrasing the Arts will be on sale at the event.
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.
