Two recordings of recent public talks by Dr. Jesse Arlen are now available to view along with a gallery of photos.
On Sunday, April 26th Dr. Arlen delivered remarks at the annual commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in Times Square on the theme “Creating Culture in Diaspora,” where he reflected on the past and present of the Armenian American community and imagined a new future, with allusions to diasporas from Armenia’s medieval past. A recording of his remarks are below and a recording of the full event is available here.
On April 9th, Dr. Arlen spoke at the NAASR headquarters in Belmont, MA on the life and significance of his late sister Tenny Arlen’s poetry, whose posthumous volume, To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here? (Կիրքով ըսելու՝ ինչո՞ւ հոս եմ) is the first full-length volume of creative literature published in the Armenian language by an American-born author.
On April 12th, Dr. Arlen gave a similar presentation at St. Mary Armenian Church in Washington, DC. A gallery of select photos from the event is available to view below while the full collection of photos is accessible here.
“This poem is from my forthcoming bilingual book of poetry, entitled Մեհենագիրք / Book of Hieroglyphs, which narrates the birth and maturation of a poet from an all-but-extinct civilization and literary tradition. Each poem in the book follows a letter of the Armenian alphabet and an Egyptian hieroglyph, whose symbolic meaning generates the poem. This poem, after the hieroglyph 𓆭, ‘Ծառ / Tree’ is the first in the fourth and final cycle of the book, entitled ‘Անհատը զարմէն / The Individual from the Clan,’ where the subject matter turns to the ancestors of the poet in the land from which they were exiled.” – Jesse Arlen
Zohrab Center director Dr. Jesse Arlen will deliver talks today and tomorrow at Harvard University and NAASR. Both are open to the public and the NAASR presentation on Thursday is a hybrid event with the option to Zoom (see registration link below).
“Heresy and Excommunication in Tenth-Century Armenia: Hierarchs, Abbots, Monks, and Tondrakites.”
Wednesday, April 8th, 4:30pm at Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Room 304, 6 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, MA. Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Mashtots Chair of Armenian Studies, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Center for the Study of World Religions, and the Committee on Medieval Studies.
An Evening of Poetry with Dr. Jesse Arlen: Tenny Arlen’s To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here?
Thursday, April 9th, 7:30pm at NAASR Vartan Gregorian Building, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA. Co-sponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and The Belmont Public Library Zoom Registration Link: https://bit.ly/4soKyhn NAASR YouTube Channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/c/ArmenianStudies
In early April, Zohrab Center director Dr. Jesse Arlen will travel to the Boston area then Washington, DC to give the following three talks, at Harvard University, NAASR, and St. Mary Armenian Church. All of the talks are open to the public. The NAASR event is a hybrid event (see registration link below for online Zoom option).
“Heresy and Excommunication in Tenth-Century Armenia: Hierarchs, Abbots, Monks, and Tondrakites.”
Wednesday, April 8th, 4:30pm at Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Room 304, 6 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, MA. Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Mashtots Chair of Armenian Studies, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Center for the Study of World Religions, and the Committee on Medieval Studies.
An Evening of Poetry with Dr. Jesse Arlen: Tenny Arlen’s To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here?
Thursday, April 9th, 7:30pm at NAASR Vartan Gregorian Building, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA. Co-sponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and The Belmont Public Library Zoom Registration Link: https://bit.ly/4soKyhn NAASR YouTube Channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/c/ArmenianStudies
Creating Culture in Diaspora: The Poetry of Tenny Arlen (1991–2015)
Sunday, April 12th, after Badarak at St. Mary Armenian Church, 4125 Fessenden St. NW, Washington, DC.
On Tuesday, March 3rd, Dr. Jesse Arlen and Fr. Samuel Rith-Najarian were in conversation together on the spiritual disciplines of solitude and silence. Drawing on the life and teachings of Jesus and the wisdom of the church fathers and monastic tradition, the talk explored how the intentional pursuit of solitude and silence were fundamental practices of our Lord and his disciples. The talk concluded with practical discussion of how to pursue these spiritual practices in the modern world and what importance, potential, and power they hold for Christians today.
The recording of the talk may be accessed on the Vemkar YouTube channel:
The talk was part 3 in a six-part series offered through Vemkar entitled “Ancient Paths, Living Wisdom: How to Incorporate the Spiritual Disciplines in our Everyday Life.”
Previous talks in the series were given on Feb. 17th by Fr. Hovnan Demirjian on the topic “Fasting from the Things that Consume Us.”
And on Feb. 24th, Fr. Yeprem Kelegian spoke on “Charity and Service.”
In upcoming weeks, Bishop Mesrop Parsamyan will speak on the topic of Meditation (March 10th), Dn. Hovannes Khosdeghian will speak on the practice of “Lectio Divina (Spiritual Reading)” (March 16th), and the series will conclude on March 24th with a talk by Dr. Jesse Arlen on the practice of gratitude.
St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral and the Zohrab Center are teaming up to offer Armenian language classes for adults this Spring, Thursday evenings 6:30–8:00pm from February 5–May 14 in person at the Diocesan Center.
Two levels are being offered: one, for complete beginners including those needing to learn the alphabet; the second for intermediate students.
We will be following Charry Karamanoukian’s Beginning Armenian: A Communicative Textbook (Routledge, 2023), which presents Western and Eastern Armenian standards in parallel lessons. The cost of the textbook is included in the registration fee.
The course will also make use of additional materials and readings.
The teachers for the beginning course will be Jesse Arlen and Hovannes Khosdeghian, while the intermediate course will be taught by Arthur Ipek and Nareg Seferian.
Joining Zohrab Center director Dr. Jesse Arlen as readers were his father, mother, and one of his sisters.
During the evening, San Luis Obispo poet laureate Kevin Clark – Cal Poly’s professor emeritus of English and former co-director of the university’s Creative Writing Program – reflected on Tenny’s poetry, placing her work in the tradition of Yeats, Eliot, and Rilke, all of whom, like Tenny, yearned after the ineffable dimension of Being and sought to put words to it.
Paul McCullough – teacher of literature at the San Luis Obispo Classical Academy – also offered reflections, calling Tenny’s poetry an invitation to a way of “iconic seeing” that sees “all things in God, all things shining with the original light of their creation.”
A recording of the moving program is available to view on YouTube:
The Zohrab Center warmly invites you to sign up for “Խորհուրդ Խորին / Mystery Profound,” the second half of a Գրաբար reading course to take place on Mondays 2:00–4:00pm ET from February 2nd to May 25th via Zoom.
The course will be led by Zohrab Center director Dr. Jesse Arlen and will focus on the hymns, chants, and prayers of the Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Church (Ս. Պատարագ), including hymn verses not commonly sung in contemporary practice as well as prayers of the service said silently by the celebrant.
The first part of this course covered the rite of vesting and preparation as well as the Liturgy of the Word, while the second half of the course will focus upon the Eucharistic Liturgy proper.
In order to benefit from the course, participants should be able to comfortably read the Armenian alphabet and have some prior experience with classical or modern Armenian.
In partnership with Dumbarton Oaks and the Zohrab Center, HMML will host an intensive three-week course on Classical Armenian for the intermediate level from July 5-July 25, 2026, at HMML in Collegeville, Minnesota.
This course, to be taught by Dr. Jesse Arlen and Dr. Julia Hintlian, is intended for graduate students or recent PhDs, who can demonstrate a need for Classical Armenian in their research. Priority is given to students who lack opportunities to study Armenian at their own institutions. The program welcomes international applicants but does not sponsor J visas.
Tuition, room, & board are free for admitted students, thanks to support from Dumbarton Oaks.
On Wednesday, October 27th, the Zohrab Center’s Lily E. Jelalian intern Luiza Ghazaryan (NYU ’26) presented original research at the NYU Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholars Program Research Symposium, entitled “Handwritten Memory: Manuscripts and Literary Journals of Armenian Migrants.”
Luiza Ghazaryan with her poster, entitled “Handwritten Memory: Manuscripts and Literary Journals of Armenian Migrants”
Conducted under the supervision of Zohrab Center director, Dr. Jesse S. Arlen, and Zohrab Center special projects coordinator and research associate, Arthur Ipek, Luiza surveyed and described 9 manuscript journals and diaries of Ottoman Armenians from the late 19th and early 20th centuries kept in the special collections of the Zohrab Center library.
Luiza chose one such handwritten journal to make the focus of her poster presentation, a collection of love poems penned by Harutyun G. Iskenderian between 1905–1906.
Luiza Ghazaryan’s poster based on her research and translation of the poems of Harutyun G. Iskenderian
Born around 1887 in Everek (Kayseri [Կեսարիա, Caesarea], Turkey), Harutyun was a freshman at St. Paul’s Institute in Tarsus during the 1905-1906 academic year. During this time, he composed an 87-page manuscript of love poems in Western Armenian, dedicated to his beloved Ms. Marine Dadourian. Luiza translated these poems from Western Armenian into English and situated them within the context of late Ottoman Armenian life and education in the provinces.
“Through my translations of Haroutune Iskenderian’s poetry, I have revealed the ways in which he conveyed sentimental expressions of wisdom, love, and devotion. Immersing myself in the author’s writings and their historical context—that is, Iskenderian’s Kayseri—made me realize how communities and educational institutions more than a century ago fostered an appreciation for literature in the hearts of students. To help me better understand this context and the author’s identity, I also made use of archival material, with school reports, photographs, and historically relevant correspondences with the US that dealt with the liminal space between life in the provinces and the Armenian Genocide,” said Luiza.
Luiza Ghazaryan is a Biology major at NYU (class of 2026), who is also pursuing minors in Creative Writing and Chemistry. She began working at the Zohrab Center in summer 2023, as a Lily E. Jelalian summer intern, a program generously funded by Dean Shahinian and has continued at the Zohrab Center since that time.
We congratulate Luiza on her research and achievements!
