Professor Hewsen to speak on Mekhitarist contributions at event in CA

PanARMENIAN.Net - Professor Robert Hewsen will speak on March 4, 2012, at the Hasmig Mgrdichian Hall of the Ararat-Eskijian Museum, Mission Hills, CA.

The lecture, entitled “The Mekhitarist Contribution to the Armenian Renaissance,” will be cosponsored by the Museum, the Armenian Cultural Visionaries, and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).

The event is free and open to the public. The lecture will be in English; a reception will follow in honor of Prof. Hewsen’s Lifetime of Achievement as a scholar.

Between 1717, when Mekhitar of Sepastia (1676-1749), born Gomidas Keumurjian and a convert to Catholicism, arrived in Venice with seventeen followers, and 1816, when the Lazarian College was founded in Moscow, the Mekhitarist monastery, established on the island of San Lazzaro in Venice, was the major center of Armenian culture worldwide.

Mekhitar’s program for uplifting the Armenian people consisted of three projects: 1) the unification of the Armenian with the Roman Catholic Church; 2) the introduction of the new learning of the European Enlightenment to the Armenian people; and 3) the presentation to Western scholarship of the achievements of Armenian culture. To accomplish these goals Mekhitar placed his faith in education and publication. The Mekhitarist Congregation, from its two monasteries in Venice and Vienna, still operates a network of schools in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. The Mekhitarist monastery on San Lazzaro remains one of the major centers of Armenian culture in the world.

Prof. Robert H. Hewsen received his doctorate from Georgetown University where he studied Armenian and Caucasian history under the pioneer Armenologist Cyril Toumanoff. From 1967 to 1999, he taught Russian and Byzantine History at Rowan University in New Jersey, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He has taught Armenian history as a visiting professor at numerous universities in the U.S. and abroad, lectured widely on Armenian subjects, and has been a regular participant in Armenian Studies panels at the annual Middle East Studies Association (MESA) conferences.

Hewsen is the translator of the seventh-century Armenian Geography of Anania Shirak-atsi and is the author of the landmark Armenia: A Historical Atlas as well as many scholarly articles, reviews, and book chapters.