Armenian News Network - Groong: Week In Review Podcast
News:Politics
The Role of The Humanities and Social Studies in Armenian Life (Ep. 32)
Academia and academic work, especially in the fields of humanities and social sciences, has always been instrumentalized by various ideologies and/or political regimes. Moreover, various disciplines within each of those fields such as anthropology, art history, literature, etc., have a long tradition of being the middle children of academia and are rarely considered to have a role in shaping minds and trends in society. In Armenia the roles of humanities and social science have undergone changes since soviet and immediate post-soviet times. At a time where both these fields were viewed as instruments of legitimization of Communism and later nationalism, academics in these fields had to navigate the murky waters of ideology less they were willing to be labeled โpseudo-academicsโ or even worse as traitors.
The challenge of having robust disciplines in humanities and social sciences in Armenia is manifold. These include encouraging critical thinking void of ideology, the role of individuals with degrees in humanities and social sciences in the larger society, challenging pre-existing paradigms and many more.ย
๐๐ซ. ๐๐ฌ๐๐๐ ๐๐จ๐ญ๐๐ก๐ข๐ค๐ข๐๐ง, who is a senior lecturer of political science and international relations at Bentley University in Massachusetts, discusses with:
๐๐ซ. ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ฅ๐ ๐๐๐ซ๐ฎ๐ญ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ง๐ฒ๐๐ง, who is Associate Professor of Art History and the chair of the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut. She is founding member of BICAR (Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research) and the Johannissyan Research Institute in the Humanities in Yerevan, Armenia. She is editor of ARTMargins peer-reviewed journal (MIT Press). Her monograph The Political Aesthetics of the Armenian Avant-garde: The Journey of the โPainterly Real'" was published by Manchester University Press in 2017 and 2019.
Editors:
ย - ๐๐ฌ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ข๐๐ง
ย - ๐๐จ๐ฏ๐ข๐ค ๐๐๐ง๐ฎ๐๐ก๐๐ซ๐ฒ๐๐ง
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