Fresno State’s Armenian Studies Program Spring Lecture Series will feature Dr. James Russell, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 20 at Fresno State.
He will discuss “An Armenian Eccentric: The Life and Times of Kara Darvish” at the free, public lecture at the Alice Peters Auditorium in the Peters Business Building (5245 N. Backer Ave.).
Russell has authored more than 100 scholarly articles, many of which have been collected in his “Armenian and Iranian Studies” book that brings together select articles published in disparate journals and volumes over the past two decades. He is most recently the author of a study on and translation of the collected poems of Bedros Tourian, titled “Bosphorus Nights.”
The Armenian Studies Lecture Series is co-sponsored by the Armenian Students Organization at Fresno State and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research. The series is funded through the Leon S. Peters Foundation.
Kara Darvish (Hakob Genjian) was an Armenian Futurist poet who lived and worked mainly in Tiflis, Georgia before and after World War I.
He wrote several novels and manifestoes, but is best known for the “postcard” poems he distributed at cafes and outside cinemas which proclaim his cosmopolitan and revolutionary credo and experiment with odd typefaces and incantatory nonsense words in Armenian, dipping also into the Armenian mythological past. (His Russian Futurist colleagues named this technique zaum or transrational language.)
Free parking will be available in lots P5 and P6 with a permit code. For the code or more information, call 559.278.2669 or visit Armenian Studies.
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