Shahane Martirosyansmartirosyan@media.ucla.edu
I became very excited upon hearing that an Armenian professor from the Yerevan State University was going to teach a course on Armenian nationalism at the University of California, Los Angeles. That a scholar from ‘back home’ would be lecturing at my school was quite a treat.
Though I was unable to sign up for the course, I couldn’t miss a chance to meet Levon Abrahamian.
Professor Abrahamian is one of the most valued members of the Anthropology department at Yerevan State. He teaches History of Anthropological Thought, Modern Trends and Cultures, and an upper division course in Anthropology with the students who were in his History of Anthropological Thought class. At UCLA, Abrahamian signed up to teach Nationalism.
All my attempts to get in touch with Abrahamian were unsuccessful until one day I entered Kerchkoff Coffee House and saw Anahid Keshishian – my Armenian teacher. She was having coffee with a distinguished man. Ms. Keshishian introduced to me to the man who just happened to be Professor Abrahamian. This was my chance to get an interview!
Since I could not attend his class, I decided to make the most out of my interview and ask him all the questions I ever wanted to ask a professor from Yerevan State University. In my hour and a half interview I was more enlightened than I ever thought I could be.
Professor Abrahamian is not your usual professor from Armenia. He admitted that when he began studying Anthropology his parents were not excited at the idea. During the Soviet era, his parents would have much preferred if he studied engineering. Defying his parents’ wishes, Abrahamian followed his studies in Cultural Anthropology.
His expertise is examining the past to make predictions for the future and for today. The most significant proof that a nation must not forget its past is Armenia during the early 1990’s movement. It was during that time that it became obvious that we were going back to our roots to create a new nation based on our Christian and pagan past.
He stressed the importance of valuing the past in the decisions made today and the implications they can have for the future. The early 90’s was also the time that Armenia was pushing for a nationalist movement. Nationalism is the most recent field that Abrahamian has been studying and teaching. In his class, students learn about the overall field of nationalism. He applies these ideas to Armenian nationalism so that his students can better grasp the idea.
Although this is the first time Abrahamian teaches at UCLA, it is not the first time in the States. In 1997, he was a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley. He admits that the atmosphere there was very different from UCLA as all the students at UCLA are Armenian while he only had very few Armenian students at Cal.
He remembers having a student from Yugoslavia who wrote a comparative paper on Kosovo and
Karabagh. Abrahamian thinks this is the best way of bringing the world together and having various cultures understand one another on another level.
As the interview went on, the Professor and I delved into various subjects ranging from the rise of consumerism and globalization – which he thinks is simply Americanization. He also covers the perceptions Armenians in America have about the students back home and vice versa.
Finally, we landed on the topic of Armenian language. I was very anxious to ask him about a topic in particular. I have recently noticed that most people use English words in their daily conversations ‘back home’. What exactly does he think of the Armenians in Armenia using foreign words? Luckily, Abrahamian sees this as no threat to the Armenian language.
For many years the world, including Armenians, believed that the Armenian language was part of the Iranian language. However, it is not so. The Armenian language is unique. He told me, as long as the sentence structure isn’t changed when speaking Armenian, interjecting foreign words will do no harm to its existence.
As the interview ended, I thought to myself: If this man could teach me so much in as little as an hour, imagine if I actually took his course...
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