“New Roads” – A New Podcast Channel from the USC Institute of Armenian Studies

For Immediate Release

March 4, 2019

USC INSTITUTE OF ARMENIAN STUDIES
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California, USA
Contact: Syuzanna Petrosyan, Associate Director
[email protected] | 213.821.3943

“New Roads” - A New Podcast Channel from the USC Institute of Armenian Studies

The USC Institute of Armenian Studies podcast channel, “New Roads”, is a new 
avenue for promoting scholarship that addresses national and global challenges 
that, in turn, impact policy, development, and progress. “These public 
discussions about history, politics, health and every other area of research 
take scholarship to the public square, where it can impact decision making and 
strategic planning within communities and especially in the Republic of 
Armenia,” said Institute Director Salpi Ghazarian. The podcast channel has a 
growing number of different series, such as Unpacking Armenia Studies, The 
Quake, and Inch by Inch. Others are planned. 

Unpacking Armenian Studies, hosted by Ghazarian, is home to interviews with 
academics, journalists and policymakers in the field of - and on the fringes of 
- Armenian Studies. It seeks to understand and make accessible the 
conversations about who these scholars are, what they do and why it matters. 
It’s an effort to humanize Armenian Studies, make it more accessible, and show 
it for the broad, varied field that it has become. It is important and relevant 
in understanding the Armenian experience today.

You will hear from Rober Koptas about running an Armenian publishing house in 
Turkey. There is Dr. Anna Ohanyan of Stonehill College talking about 
non-traditional conflicts and complicated geo-political agendas in the Caucasus 
and in the Balkans. You will hear from Dr. Kristin Cavoukian of the University 
of Toronto as she discusses Armenian-ness, identity, and exclusion as both 
personal and academic questions. Dr. Tom Catena, a Catholic missionary and the 
only resident surgeon practicing under harrowing conditions in the Nuba 
Mountains in southern Sudan, is also a guest on the show. He talks about 
humanitarian work, his work in Nuba and about his role as the 2017 Aurora Prize 
Laureate.

Dr. Houri Berberian, Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies at 
UC Irvine, who has written about Armenian involvement in Iran’s Constitutional 
Revolution, talks about everything from life in Lebanon during the Civil War to 
undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley where she came to appreciate the 
connectedness of the peoples and issues of the greater Middle East and the 
Armenian role in regional processes. 

“The people, the graduate students, the young scholars who are doing Armenian 
History now are doing it very differently. They are doing it within regional 
and global contexts, and are looking at connections, and transnationalism, and 
gender and sexuality - things that no Armenian scholars have touched until now, 
and that's very important.” said Dr. Berberian to USC Institute of Armenian 
Studies Director, Salpi Ghazarian. “Armenian studies is about 50 years behind 
in these things and we have a lot of catching up to do.”

Dr. Sebouh Aslanian talks discusses the Armenian merchants from Iran’s New 
Julfa region who operated simultaneously and successfully across all the major 
empires of the 17th and18th centuries. These merchants were the original 
transnational, global Armenians, and their legacy is visible throughout South 
and East Asia in the form of churches and cultural monuments. Their 
philanthropy bankrolled Armenian printing capacity in Venice, Amsterdam, 
Livorno, Madras, Calcutta, Lvov and New Julfa.

Dr. Christina Maranci, Professor of Armenian Art at Tufts University, is the 
author of a chapter in the Armenia! exhibit catalogue on Armenian art, 
religion, and trade in the Middle Ages. She talks about her research that 
places art, architecture, and the material objects of Armenia and Armenians 
within a critical and historical context. UCLA's Dr. Shant Shekherdimian 
discusses about Armenia's and Karabakh's health care systems and the Diaspora's 
role. Dr. Katy Pearce, a professor of communications at the University of 
Washington, talks about Armenia, Azerbaijan, social media, and the study of 
societal transformation. Dr. Georgi Derluguian of NYU Abu Dhabi, discusses 
'normal' life in the Soviet Union, Armenia's post-Soviet evolution, revolution, 
and the "New Armenia."

In The Quake, the Institute’s Chitjian Research Archivist Gegham Mughnetsyan 
explores the very personal and public history of the powerful Spitak earthquake 
that devastated the northern region of Armenia and his hometown Gyumri on 
December 7, 1988. He delves into the challenges that complicated the region’s 
recovery process and that buried the future and promise of an entire generation.

“Podcasts are like your own private radio station. You can just click and 
listen to conversations that interest you,” explains Ghazarian. You can listen 
to the podcasts by searching for New Roads on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud 
(https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__soundcloud.com_user-2D799767374&d=DwIGaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=LVw5zH6C4LHpVQcGEdVcrQ&m=zFK1pO9wL02QY8w3YHd1msteZP_dEwRfdWzMeFiJaz0&s=NLv9ppIIWaiIdCMIjRiTxJKjqQKNSPkL1wo8DnNEnRc&e=)
 or anywhere you get your podcasts or by visiting armenian.usc.edu.   

About the Institute

Established in 2005, the USC Institute of Armenian Studies supports 
multidisciplinary scholarship to re-define, explore and study the complex 
issues that make up the contemporary Armenian experience—from post-genocide to 
the developing Republic of Armenia to the evolving diaspora. The institute 
encourages research, publications and public service, and promotes links among 
the global academic and Armenian communities.

For inquiries, write to [email protected] or call 213.821.3943.





Emil Lazarian

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS