Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies,

Prof. James R. Russell
"Calm before the Storm:
The Armenian Poet Misak Medzarents on the Threshold of the Genocide"
The lyric poet Misak Medzarents, who migrated to Constantinople from the interior Armenian heartland, is known for his lyrical idylls and elegies of nature and traditional rural life. Part of the reason for this focus was personal; part of it was an attempt to create in a period of stifling censorship; but part also, Professor Russell argues, is a conscious project to
construct a new kind of Armenian rooted in land and arms rather than deracinated urban life, trade, and money. Medzarents was also involved in creating a viable Armenian national language. Russell will attempt to relate this to parallel contemporary developments in the Russian Empire among the Jews: the forging of Zionism and the resurrection of Hebrew.

Prof. James R. Russell has been the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University since 1992.
His books include Bosphorus Nights: The Complete Lyric Poems of Bedros Tourian, Armenian and Iranian Studies, The Book of Flowers, An Armenian Epic: The Heroes of Kasht, Zoroastrianism in Armenia, and Hovhannes Tlkurantsi and the Medieval Armenian Lyric Tradition.

Admission to the event is free and open to the public as space allows.
A reception will follow the event.


Parking is available at metered spaces along Bay State Road, Commonwealth Avenue, and in the Warren Towers Garage at 700 Commonwealth Ave.

More information about the lecture is available by contacting Prof. Payaslian
at payas@bu.edu or NAASR at 617-489-1610 or hq@naasr.org.

Oct. 13, 2010

The Castle
225 Bay State Road
Boston University

NAASR