Richard Hovannisian, a renowned scholar of Armenian history who was a UCLA faculty member for more than a half century, died on July 10. He was 90 years old.
Hovannisian earned his doctorate at UCLA in 1966 and joined the history department as a full-time faculty member in modern Armenian and Near Eastern history in 1969. An illustrious researcher and educator, he made monumental contributions to the study of the history of modern Armenia and the Armenian Genocide.
In 1986, he became the first person to hold UCLA’s Armenian Educational Foundation Professor of Modern Armenian History endowed chair; the chair was later renamed in his honor.
“The whole of the Armenian studies family has suffered an irreplaceable loss and will be forever in Professor Hovannisian’s debt for the many sacrifices he made to build the scholarly foundation of modern Armenian history,” said Sebouh David Aslanian, director of the UCLA Armenain Studies Center and UCLA’s current Richard Hovannisian Professor of Modern Armenian History. “It was a truly magnificent feat, especially since he did so at a time when he was practically alone and had no shoulders to stand on.”
Hovannisian’s published works include “Armenia on the Road to Independence” (University of California, 1967) and his four-volume magnum opus, “The Republic of Armenia” (University of California, 1971). He also edited the two-volume “The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times” (MacMillan, 1998), which has become a definitive textbook of Armenian history.
“The loss of our precious friend and mentor Richard Hovannisian is deeply felt at UCLA and around the world,” said Ann Karagozian, director of The Promise Armenian Institute and a UCLA distinguished professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. “Even late in life, he remained actively engaged in The Promise Armenian Institute, speaking at an event just this April.”
Taner Akçam, director of the Armenian Genocide Research Program, said, “Richard Hovannisian was a giant in the world of Armenian Genocide historiography. Though an era has ended with him, he will continue to live with us through his vast research contributions and the scholars he mentored.”
A child of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, Hovannisian scholar dedicated his life to promoting the study of the genocide and the full sweep of Armenian history. In 1969, he launched the Armenian Genocide Oral History Project at UCLA, which aimed to preserve eyewitness testimonies of survivors in southern California. Together with his students, Hovannisian interviewed more than 1,000 genocide survivors during the 1970s and 1980s. The oral history collection was donated to the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive in 2018 in order to make it available in digitized form to scholars worldwide.
Another of his signature scholarly achievements was the conference series Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces, which ran from 2000 to 2021 and resulted in the publication of 15 edited volumes on the history and culture of historic Western Armenia and the global Armenian diaspora.
Hovannisian co-founded the Society for Armenian Studies 1974, and he served as its president three times. He was also an active member of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research throughout his life, and he served on the boards of numerous national and international educational groups. He was the first social scientist living abroad to be elected to the Armenian Academy of Sciences.
Among the numerous awards and prizes he received were a Guggenheim fellowship; the Medal of St. Mesrop Mashtots, which was presented by His Holiness Karekin I; and the Movses Khorenatsi Medal, awarded by the president of the Republic of Armenia in 1998.
Hovannisian was predeceased by his wife, Dr. Vartiter Kotcholosian Hovannisian, and he is survived by his four children, Raffi, Armen, Ani and Garo.