LOS ANGELES — Director of the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies Dr. Shushan Karapetian was invited to contribute an original essay to the Brown Journal of World Affairs, a biannual journal of international relations and foreign policy produced at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Founded in 1993, the Journal provides a forum for world leaders, policymakers, and prominent academics to engage in vigorous intellectual debate. Each issue showcases incisive scholarship on the most salient international issues of today and tomorrow. Past contributors include Jimmy Carter, Samantha Power, Mikhail Gorbachev, John Kerry, Noam Chomsky, and Joseph Stiglitz.
The newest edition of the Journal features a section entitled “Diaspora Communities,” and includes Dr. Karapetian’s essay Performing Diasporic Resistance: (Re)Claiming the Heritage Language. Based on her fieldwork during and after the 2020 Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) War, Dr. Karapetian examines the unprecedented transnational mobilization of Armenian communities worldwide. She highlights how advances in digital media and communication technologies have enlarged the scope of civilian participation in warfare. The essay examines how language is viewed and used during war, particularly the heritage language of diasporan civilians. More specifically, Dr. Karapetian explores to what extent the heritage language is employed as both a symbolic and strategic tool in wartime transnational activism.
The Institute is committed to centering Armenian Studies in global academic discourse. This vision is achieved through meaningful contributions by Institute experts to preeminent scholarly forums. The Institute’s pioneering research consistently brings Armenian experiences to the forefront of societal conversation on the most important issues of our time.
