Arts, Heritage, and Belonging: Armenian Transcultural Entanglements
June 14 - 15, 2023 | 2023 Ralph and Ruth Fisher Forum for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Co-organizers: Donna A. Buchanan (Professor, Music, Anthropology, Slavic Languages & Literatures); Maureen E. Marshall (Associate Director, REEEC; President, ARISC)
Location: Levis Faculty Center, Room 210
(919 W Illinois St, Urbana, IL 61801)
Co-organized by ethnomusicologist Donna Buchanan (Professor, Music) and REEEC Associate Director and archaeologist Maureen Marshall, this two-day, international, hybrid symposium will bring together ten established and emerging scholarly specialists poised to offer social science perspectives on expressive culture as portals to Armenian subjectivities, both in the Republic of Armenia and across the world, with an emphasis on the contemporary, postsocialist moment. In particular, the event will explore how sensory modalities (e.g., sound, image, movement, taste) and their artifacts (dance, media, music, visual art, foodways, textiles, monuments, and other dimensions of intangible heritage) have been harnessed by cultural actors and activists to maintain, perpetuate, instigate, or modify notions of Armenian-ness and its geopolitical entanglements in transcultural contexts. Participants come from the fields of anthropology, ethnochoreology, ethnomusicology, history, musicology, and sociology. Presentations are open to the public.