ARC's primary mission is to serve students, the academic community and the public, both in the U.S. and worldwide, by facilitating research and publications on all aspects of Armenian history, society and culture.
April 12, 2024
Michigan Public's "Stateside" featured a discussion on the findings of the Armenian Diaspora Survey in Michigan with Dr. Vahe Sahakyan from the Armenian Research Center and Dr. Inna Mirzoyan from the Department of Sociology, Wayne State University.
Dr. Sahakyan's paper titled "Transcultural Armenianness" examined the lived experiences, practices and expressions of Armenianness that have evolved throughout the past century beyond the Armenian speaking communities and spaces in the US and France.
Full program of the conference: "Diaspora(s) arménienne(s) en mouvement : espaces, pratiques et acteurs au 21ème siècle", March 14-15, Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers, France
Dr. Sahakyan's chapter titled "Transnational Politics and Governmental Strategies in the Formative Years of the Post-Genocide Armenian Diaspora (1920s-1930s)" was recently published in The Armenian Diaspora and Stateless Power: Collective Identity in the Transnational 20th Century (Talar Chahinian, Sossie Kasbarian, Tsolin Nalbantian, eds.) by Bloomsbury publishing (2023).
"Transnational Politics and Governmental Strategies in the Formative Years of the Post-Genocide Armenian Diaspora (1920s-1930s)" explores the transnational governmental efforts of the exiled leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and the Bolshevik government of Soviet Armenia in the period between 1920s and 1930s to propose an approach to diasporic governmentality that is multi-centered, involving both state- and diaspora-based agents with incompatible ideologies and governmental aspirations. It argues that the governmental strategies of the Armenian leaders and institutions involved three parallel processes:
a) discursive construction of Armenian collective needs,
b) creation of spaces of socialization, in which dispersed Armenian populations and their diaspora-born descendants would be exposed to these discourses on a regular basis, and
c) expansion of their governmental efforts over the organized and established Armenian spaces in the diaspora. In addition, the ARF leaders also employed social discipline and exclusion to deal with dissenting voices and to consolidate the party’s ranks around the anti-Soviet discourse.
Transnational activities of various state and non-state actors, as the chapter concludes, may end up fractioning diasporic spaces locally, nationally, and transnationally, rather than integrating dispersed populations into a singular governable and governmental space.
The Armenian Research Center co-organized the second leg of "The Soviet Experience in Armenia and its Legacy" in collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the National Academy of Science of Armenia. Dr. Armen Zakarian, the UM-Dearborn Vice Provost for Research, Dr. Martin Hershok, the Dean of CASL, and Dr. Ara Sanjian, the director of ARC, welcomed in their opening remarks the participants of the conference, stressing the important collaboration between the two institutions. Dr. Sahakyan presented a paper on the second panel, sparking discussions on Soviet Armenia's complicated relations with the Armenian diasporic political parties and institutions
The Armenian Society of Fellows (ASOF) is a non-profit organization, that connects Armenian scholars of various backgrounds to serve one mission: to help raise Armenia’s educational and research institutions to world-class levels and to network them globally. The ASOF holds annual conferences, bringing together scholars from various parts of the world, and the various task forces to report on their activities. Dr. Sanjian and Dr. Sahakyan attended the ASOF Dilijan conference, engaging in interdisciplinary dialogues and sharing insights. Dr Sahakyan shared his impressions from the ASOF Conference with CivilNet -- a major news reporting agency in Armenia.
On June 29, 2023, Dr. Sanjian and Dr. Sahakyan met with the Director of the National Library of Armenia (NLA) to the discuss scope and areas of future collaboration. The meeting was followed by an exchange of book donations.
Dr. Sahakyan was subsequently invited to give a talk at the NLA on current metadata cataloging practices in the United States. The presentation, which took place on July 7, 2023, engaged the audience in an interesting Q&A and discussion on the ways in which cataloging practices in America and in Armenia could be aligned for the benefit of global users of Armenian language resources.
This year, the collaboration between the Armenian Research Center and the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan was marked by book exchanges and a lecture that Dr. Sanjian delivered on July 13, 2023.
While in Armenia, Dr. Sanjian delivered several lectures and participated in panel discussions and podcast interviews. These included:
Lecture at the History Museum of Armenia on the challenges of the writing the history of Armenians in Lebanon, July 7
Dr. Sahakyan was invited to participate as a panelist on the Armenian National Youth Forum, hosted by the Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs, on August 1-3, 2023.
Dr. Sahakyan was later invited to share his impressions and views on diaspora engagement policies in the interview with Sago Arian, August 6.
Our In-person office hours are:
Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
For further information and inquiries please contact Mr. Gerald Ottenbreit, Jr. at [email protected] or call the ARC at 313-593-5181.
The Armenian Research Center is in 136 FCN, at 19000 Hubbard Drive. Consult the UM-Dearborn illustrated campus map for the location of the FCN building on Hubbard Dr.
Free visitor parking is available on the parking lot across from entrance to the FCN. Visitor parking is marked on the campus map by VP.
Armenian Research Center
4901 Evergreen Rd.
Dearborn, MI 48128
