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The Research Repository

Armenian scholarship open to all

A digital library of verified, open scholarship on all things Armenian, including Armenian history, the Genocide, Artsakh, language, and the diaspora.

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What is being done to Armenian monuments in Artsakh now is not new and it is not vandalism. Seda Parsamyan traces the demolition policy of the Hamidian massacres of the 1890s and puts the legal question directly: when a state sets out to erase a people's churches, at what point does that become cultural genocide? She works through how the concept has been defined, redefined and quietly narrowed by people who would rather it did not apply. The frame she builds is the one now being reached for over Artsakh.

Mass Destruction of Armenian Cultural Heritage during the Hamidian Massacres (1894-1896)

Parsamyan, Seda A. · 2023 · International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 5–34 (AGMI, Yerevan); DOI 10.51442/ijags.0043
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Topic:Armenian art history
Showing 1 of 1 matching publications (200 total) · catalogue updated 2026-07-22
Journal ArticleOpen Access

How to Paint Destruction: The Role of Material Objects in the Work of Armenian Painter Vardges Sureniants

Maranci, Christina, 2025
Études arméniennes contemporaines, No. 16 (2025), 'Objects of Thought', pp. 73–97 (Bibliothèque Nubar / AGBU); DOI 10.4000/15gme

Maranci, a leading scholar of Armenian art and architecture, offers a close formal reading of Vardges Sureniants' painting 'Trampled Sanctuary' (1890s), a near-contemporary depiction of the Hamidian Massacres. She argues the work should be read not merely as documentation of destroyed artifacts but as a totalizing scene of wreckage that gathers up nearly the whole repertoire of Armenian art. Sureniants' impressionistic handling, she contends, both invites and obstructs close inspection of the ruined objects, producing a tension between recording artifacts and re-creating them — a meditation on loss and on the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage.

Armenian art historyVardges SureniantsHamidian Massacrescultural heritage destructionmaterial culture
English

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What is in this repository?

Peer-reviewed and institutional scholarship on Armenian subjects — history, the Armenian Genocide, Artsakh, language and literature, the church, and the diaspora — in any language and from any country. Journal articles, books, book chapters, theses and institute publications are all in scope. Entries are chosen for what they contribute to an Armenian student's understanding, not for how recent or how famous they are.

What does 'verified' mean here?

It means a person opened the link and checked the record against the publisher's own page: the title, the authors, the venue, the volume and pages, and the identifier. The date of that check is shown on each entry's page. Where an entry has no date shown, no check has been logged for it yet, and the catalogue does not claim one.

What is the summary on each entry?

A short account of what the publication does, followed by notes on what it offers different readers — a student writing a term paper, an academic, someone reading for the community, someone new to the subject. They are meant to tell you what a piece is useful for, not only what it argues.

How do I suggest a publication, or report an error?

Use the 'Suggest a publication' link at the foot of the directory. The same address takes corrections — a broken link, a wrong page range, a misattributed author. Corrections are checked against the publisher's record before an entry changes.