Inaugural lecture of the IMAS Master's Visiting Chair of Excellence: Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh
The Inalco Foundation and the Armenian Studies Section of Inalco are honored to welcome Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, 2025 Laureate of the Visiting Chair of Excellence of the International Master of Armenian Studies (IMAS), for an inaugural lecture entitled "Survivor Objects and Captive Sites: Art and Cultural Heritage in Genocide".
This conference proposes to reflect on the fate of the cultural heritage of communities destroyed during the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Armenian cultural sites - particularly religious sites - were destroyed, repurposed, appropriated, sold or moved, often cut off from their connection with the surviving Armenian communities. Many objects, especially sacred ones, have also been looted, transferred or dispersed. Some are now in museums in Europe or North America, where they are displayed primarily for their aesthetic qualities.
Based on these examples, the lecture will analyze the near-simultaneity of two processes: the destruction of heritages and their transformation into art objects. It will examine the implications for art history, cultural memory and the role of museums in the XXIᵉ century.
The lecture will be followed by a cocktail reception in the salons of Inalco.
About the speaker
Professor of Art History at the University of California, Davis, Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh is a historian whose research focuses on the art, architecture and urbanism of the Middle East and Southern Caucasus, from the early modern period to the present day. Her approach, anchored in the critical study of cultural heritage, explores the diversity of communities, issues of memory and contemporary debates around the preservation, destruction and restitution of works of art.
Her work draws on a particular focus on emblematic objects and monuments, studied in their multiple contexts, and illuminates the close links between history, human rights and collective memory. She is notably the author of The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice, which traces the history of the famous Gospel of Zeytun and its dispersed fate in the 20th century, at the crossroads of issues of genocide, diaspora and restitution. His next book, City of 1001 Churches: Architecture, Destruction, and Preservation at a World Heritage Site, offers an unprecedented reading of the heritage of the medieval city of Ani, a place both Armenian and Islamic, marked by centuries of circulation and conflict.
Through her work, Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh contributes to renewing Armenian studies by placing them within broader debates on cultural memory, endangered heritage and the role of the arts in contemporary societies.
About the IMAS master's degree
Inalco's Armenian Studies section is the only one in the world outside Armenia to offer a comprehensive training program covering a wide range of disciplines: language, linguistics, ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary history, art history, socio-anthropology, literature and translation. This training is accessible from the first year of the bachelor's degree to the doctorate, for beginners and experienced speakers alike.
The Master International Études Arméniennes (IMAS) was created on the initiative of Professor Anaïd Donabédian-Demopoulos, director of the Armenian Studies section at Inalco. This program meets an international demand for high-level degree courses in Armenian studies, accessible online and without French prerequisites.
The master's degree gives students from all over the world access to the expertise of a recognized teaching team and offers a unique framework for developing intellectual and professional activities in Western Armenian, the language of the diaspora. It also integrates the teachings of the "Teaching Western Armenian in the Diaspora" diploma, created in 2017 in collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which can now be validated as part of a master's degree recognized at European level.
With the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
