An overview of the literature, visual arts, and social thought produced in Armenia and its transnational diaspora since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of Armenia’s independence in 1991. The course examines contemporary developments in the arts in the context of the major socio-political changes of the period.

This class centers on the response of literary and visual artists to two major calamities that occurred in Armenia in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods: the earthquake of 1988 and the first war of Artsakh (1988-1994). This course covers a range of texts to look at the differing ways these calamities were represented: novels, short stories, poems, films, photographs, philosophical essays, and academic articles. We will start the course by looking at these moments first in a historical context and then examining the responses of manly writers and filmmakers that represented these two calamities in their texts both in the Republic of Arminia and its transnational diaspora, which include those from Georgia, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and other parts of North Africa, Turkey, Russia, Portugal, Canada, and the United States. Some of the questions we will examine in this class include: how does poetry represent calamity and trauma? How does film? What are the ways in which these texts attempts to serve as witnesses to genocide, war, exile, and displacement? Can they serve witness? In what ways? What are the limitations of such representations? What do these forms of creation offer that oral histories cannot? What is the role of fiction versus testimony in working through the past? How does one deal with moving forward? The end of this course will offer also insight into the movement of Armenian Futurism, and will look at the ways in which this movement finds parallels with other futurism, primarily Afro-futurism and Indigenous futurisms? How are the ways in which cultures can use visual and literary storytelling to heal from such traumas and look to a future that both acknowledges its past, but can also generate a healthy understanding and community from it.

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Requirements class fulfills