Paging through Photos and Songs: Hayganush Mark and Koharig Ghazarosian’s Friendship in Post-Genocide Istanbul
This event was organized by the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law and UCLA Promise Armenian Institute in partnership with UCLA Armenian Music Program under the direction of Movses Pogossian.
In this event, Dr. Lerna Ekmekcioglu (MIT) and Dr. Melissa Bilal (UCLA) followed the story of a friendship between two Armenian women in Istanbul that endured the hardships of WWI, the Armenian Genocide, and early republican Turkey’s repressive minority politics. Hayganush Mark was the leading Armenian feminist writer of her time and Koharig Ghazarosian was a prominent composer, concert pianist, and piano teacher active in Paris and Istanbul. Their intertwined lives can be traced in photographs, letters, and pages of sheet music. Internationally acclaimed actress, filmmaker, and writer Nora Armani, mezzo-soprano Danielle Segen of the Vem Ensemble, and internationally renowned pianist Steven Vanhauwaert performed and recorded Ghazarosian’s song settings of Mark’s poetry to be premiered at this event. Through this repertoire which was brought back to life as a part of their ongoing project Feminism in Armenian: An Interpretive Anthology and Digital Archive, Bilal and Ekmekcioglu discussed the ruptures and continuities in Armenian community life in Turkey. This event was organized by the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law and UCLA Promise Armenian Institute in partnership with UCLA Armenian Music Program under the direction of Movses Pogossian.
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Armenian Music Program at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA Armenian Law Students Association, UCLA Department of Gender Studies, Armenian Museum of America, Society for Armenian Studies, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research