Asbarez reports that from Nov. 10-11, the Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History at UCLA will host an international conference titled “Port Cities and Printers: Five Centuries of Global Armenian Print” in honor of Prof. Richard Hovannisian.
Asbarez adds. “From its origins in Venice in 1512, the history of early modern (1500-1800) Armenian print culture was closely entangled with that of port cities, initially in Europe and subsequently in Asia. In fact, virtually every Armenian printing press before 1800 was established either in or close to port cities, and the few that were not, owed their existence to ongoing relations with port locations. Yet, despite the obvious relationship between ports and printers, their synergetic relationship has thus far largely eluded scholarly attention.
The conference will kick off with a keynote address on the topic of the history of books and reading in the early modern Atlantic world, not directly related to Armenian print history, at Royce Hall 314 on Friday evening at 5 p.m. Starting on Saturday morning at 9:15 a.m. scholars of Armenian print and book history will hold back-to-back panels on various aspects of Armenian book history ranging from the question of the crucial shift from Manuscript to Print culture in the early decades of the 1500s to the relationship between merchants, ports, and printers, as well as the social and cultural role of print technology in shaping the arc of Armenian history”.
