The Origins of Armenian Nationalism in the United States and the American Armenian Press (1880s-1920s)

The growing scholarship on the ethnic press in the United States has greatly contributed to our understanding of their functions within ethnic communities and in the broader society. This study, focusing on a sample of the Armenian ethnic press, demonstrates that in the formative stages of the Armenian immigrant community (1880s-1920s), the Armenian press promoted long-distance nationalism, on the one hand, and ‘cultural congruence’ between American and Armenian values, identities, and worldviews, on the other hand. Armenians arrived in the United States in increasing numbers beginning in the late nineteenth century, as they fled Ottoman persecutions and massacres, and the community further grew in the aftermath of the genocide during World War I. As Armenians established roots in their new environment, their cultural production during the period under consideration included more than one hundred dailies, weeklies, and monthly journals. These publications fell into three categories: nationalist/long-distance nationalist, religious, and non-political/professional. The Armenian ethnic papers catered to the tastes of nostalgic immigrants and emphasized the urgency of reforms in, or outright liberation from, the Ottoman empire. Thus, this case study demonstrates that the Armenian ethnic press propagated long-distance nationalism as they sought to forge community solidarity and to fortify cultural preservation. At the same time, they also promoted American values, the American Dream, active citizenship, and Americanization in general—a significant point regarding the paradoxical role of the ethnic press in host societies but often neglected in the literature on ethnonationalism and long-distance nationalism. This article also briefly discusses the long-term ramifications of Armenian ethnic cultural development as a diaspora community in the United States

Industrious as Pasts: Armenian-American Poetics and Capillarity

The driving force of Capillarity (Vaun, 2009) is the metaphorical aspect of diasporic, exilic consciousness. Metaphorical because I am neither an immigrant with first-hand knowledge of what that entails, nor an American untethered by a complex, bilingual, traumatized other identity—my experience of half of my psyche is in large part second-hand, filtered over many years by generations whose lived memories I carry. Thus, it is as if I was born an expat, somehow exiled from both cultural halves that make me whole. As Edward Said (1996) points out, “Exile for the intellectual in this metaphysical sense is restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled, and unsettling others” (p. 53). The structural and thematic strands in Capillarity attempt to transform the inbetweenness of competing languages and histories into a poetics of becoming; a fragmented meditation on the kinetic energy of being bicultural, rather than the sentimentality and mythologizing it has induced in much Armenian-American and ethnic poetry to date. The motivation was, in many ways, to rid myself not of the Armenian language or culture but of the limitations that conventional definitions of Armenian identity impose. It is a motivation to reckon with the “twilight zone between history and memory; between the past as a generalized record which is open to relatively dispassionate inspection and the past as a remembered part of, or background to, one's own life” (Hobsbawm, 1989, p. 3). Capillarity, with its distinctive perspective and approach, also joins the wider poetic activity of contemporary bicultural poets who are, in their own ways, translating and re-translating cultural and linguistic parts of themselves, with the common goal of redefining and reimagining what it means to be a human and a citizen of the world

The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses

The question of Jewish ancestry has been the subject of controversy for over two centuries and has yet to be resolved. The "Rhineland Hypothesis" proposes that Eastern European Jews emerged from a small group of German Jews who migrated eastward and expanded rapidly. Alternatively, the "Khazarian Hypothesis" suggests that Eastern European descended from Judean tribes who joined the Khazars, an amalgam of Turkic clans that settled the Caucasus in the early centuries CE and converted to Judaism in the 8th century. The Judaized Empire was continuously reinforced with Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman Jews until the 13th century. Following the collapse of their empire, the Judeo-Khazars fled to Eastern Europe. The rise of European Jewry is therefore explained by the contribution of the Judeo-Khazars. Thus far, however, their contribution has been estimated only empirically; the absence of genome-wide data from Caucasus populations precluded testing the Khazarian Hypothesis. Recent sequencing of modern Caucasus populations prompted us to revisit the Khazarian Hypothesis and compare it with the Rhineland Hypothesis. We applied a wide range of population genetic analyses - including principal component, biogeographical origin, admixture, identity by descent, allele sharing distance, and uniparental analyses - to compare these two hypotheses. Our findings support the Khazarian Hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, 7 supplementary figures, 7 supplementary table

Fluoromycobacteriophages can detect viable Mycobacterium tuberculosis and determine phenotypic rifampicin resistance in 3-5 days from sputum collection

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 40% of tuberculosis (TB) cases are not diagnosed and treated correctly. Even though there are several diagnostic tests available in the market, rapid, easy, inexpensive detection, and drug susceptibility testing (DST) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is still of critical importance specially in low and middle-income countries with high incidence of the disease. In this work, we have developed a microscopy-based methodology using the reporter mycobacteriophage mCherrybombΦ for detection of Mycobacterium spp. and phenotypic determination of rifampicin resistance within just days from sputum sample collection. Fluoromycobacteriophage methodology is compatible with regularly used protocols in clinical laboratories for TB diagnosis and paraformaldehyde fixation after infection reduces biohazard risks with sample analysis by fluorescence microscopy. We have also set up conditions for discrimination between M. tuberculosis complex (MTBC) and non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) strains by addition of p-nitrobenzoic acid (PNB) during the assay. Using clinical isolates of pre-XDR and XDR-TB strains from this study, we tested mCherrybombΦ for extended DST and we compared the antibiotic resistance profile with those predicted by whole genome sequencing. Our results emphasize the utility of a phenotypic test for M. tuberculosis extended DST. The many attributes of mCherrybombΦ suggests this could be a useful component of clinical microbiological laboratories for TB diagnosis and since only viable cells are detected this could be a useful tool for monitoring patient response to treatment.Fil: Rondon Salazar, Liliana. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Urdániz, Estefanía. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Latini, Cecilia. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Hospital de Infecciosas "Dr. Francisco Javier Muñiz"; ArgentinaFil: Payaslian, Florencia Pía. Universidad de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Matteo, Mario. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Hospital de Infecciosas "Dr. Francisco Javier Muñiz"; ArgentinaFil: SOSA, EZEQUIEL. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Cálculo; ArgentinaFil: Fernández Do Porto, Darío Augusto. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Cálculo; ArgentinaFil: Turjanski, Adrian. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Nemirovsky, Sergio Ivan. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Hatfull, Graham F.. University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown; Estados UnidosFil: Poggi, Susana. University of Pittsburgh; Estados UnidosFil: Piuri, Mariana. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Hospital de Infecciosas "Dr. Francisco Javier Muñiz"; Argentin

Voters Get What They Want (When They Pay Attention): Human Rights, Policy Benefits, and Foreign Aid

How do the human rights practices abroad affect decisions about the allocation of foreign aid? This article provides a new approach to this long-standing question. We bring donor government, donor citizens, and recipients’ attributes together in a single analytical framework. We argue that donor citizens are more self-serving than previously assumed; they do not wholeheartedly support their government punishing human rights abusers when those states provide important policy benefits. When donor governments believe that their citizens will hold them accountable for their policy choices, they make foreign aid decisions that mirror citizens’ self-serving policy preferences. Thus, they avoid punishing repressive regimes that are the sources of valuable benefits. Our experimental and observational results provide support for our claims. Overall, our findings suggest that aid donors selectively punish human rights violators with aid cuts, but their variegated treatment of human rights violators largely stems from the self-serving policy preferences of their voters

Daniel Varoujan à l’Université de Gand (1905-1909)

Although works on Daniel Varoujan often refer to his years at Ghent University, there is to date no publication focusing specifically on his studies at Ghent. This is the first study to employ the archives of Ghent University as well as the archives of the city of Ghent, in addition to the archives in Yerevan, Armenia, to offer a detailed attention to Varoujan’s studies at the University. The city archives were used to identify his addresses of residence in Ghent. During his first semester at Ghent University in the fall of 1905, Varoujan audited courses in literature and philosophy, but upon formal matriculation beginning in January 1906 he changed his field to political economy and sociology but also took courses in history, psychology, and law. Varoujan concluded his studies at Ghent in 1909 and returned to his hometown Brgnik as a mature intellectual and a prolific poet deeply influenced by his education at Ghent University.Bien que de études sur Varoujan font souvent référence à Gand, il n’y a pas encore eu de publication qui analyse en détail ses années d’étude à Gand. Se basant sur les archives de l’Université de Gand et de la ville de Gand, tout comme des archives à Erévan en Arménie, cet article reconstruit les cours suivis, les lieux d’habitation, et les conditions de vie de Varoujan à Gand. Pendant son premier semestre (automne 1905), il suivait des cours en littérature et philosophie, mais dès qu’il était formellement enregistré comme étudiant, il changeait les sujets en économie politique et sociologie, tout en suivant des cours en histoire, psychologie et droit. Terminant ses études en 1909, il retournait à sa ville natale de Brgnik comme un intellectuel et poète profondément influencé par ses études à Gand.De meeste studies over Varoujan verwijzen naar zijn studiejaren in Gent, zonder evenwel veel detail te bieden. Dit is het eerste artikel dat een gedetailleerde analyse biedt van deze jaren, gebaseerd op archiefonderzoek in de stads-en universiteitsarchieven, naast archieven in Yerevan in Armenië. De studies, woonplaatsen en leefomstandigheden van Varoujan worden opgehelderd. Tijdens het eerste semester in de herfst van 1905 volgende Varoujan als vrije student cursussen literatuur en filosofie, maar vanaf januari 1906, nu officieel ingeschreven, studeerde hij politieke economie en sociologie en volgde hij ook vakken geschiedenis, psychologie en recht. Varoujan beëindigde zijn studies in 1909 en keerde naar zijn geboortestad Brgnik terug als een intellectueel en productief dichter, sterk beïnvloed door het onderwijs dat hij genoten had aan de universiteit van Gent.Payaslian Simon. Daniel Varoujan à l’Université de Gand (1905-1909). In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 97, fasc. 3, 2019. Langues et littératures modernes - Moderne taal-en letterkunde. pp. 841-872

The Destruction of the Armenian Church during the Genocide

The scholarship on the Armenian Genocide has expanded enormously during the past three decades. Most of these works have focused on the causes and consequences of the genocide, Western responses to and Turkish denial of the genocide, and, more recently, Armenian-Turkish reconciliation. The role of the Armenian Apostolic Church, however, has received little attention in the literature. In addition to its ecclesiastical duties, the Armenian Church has over the centuries performed various secular functions, including, in the Ottoman Empire, acting as the principal representative agency for the Armenian millet. This article briefly examines the responses of the Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople to the internationalization of the Armenian Question and then focuses on the three ecclesiastical leaders who played a central role in attempts to address the crises enveloping the Armenian people during World War I: Patriarch Zaven Der Yeghiayan of the Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople, Catholicos Sahag II Khabayan of the Great House of Cilicia at Sis, and Catholicos Kevork V Surenyants of the Mother See at Echmiadzin. All three witnessed the destruction of their people and had the unenviable task of searching for the means to end the human catastrophe. Indeed, the Armenian Church itself, a most conservative institution harboring the utmost loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, in the end became a victim of the genocidal scheme of the Young Turk regime

Un poète arménien à Gand : cent ans après

The aim of this special issue is, first, to illuminate the exchanges between Belgium and the Ottoman Empire and the experiences of students coming from that region, through the example of the Armenian poet Daniel Varoujan, student at Ghent University from 1905 until 1909. It includes therefore papers on foreign students at Ghent (P. De Messemaeker and C. Verbruggen) and on the Belgian public opinion about the Armenian question in this period (H. Alloul and H. De Smaele), besides articles on the life of Varoujan in Ghent (S. Payaslian) and his publications in French in Ghent (E. Delacenserie). A second aim is to probe what influence the stay in Ghent had on the artistic and intellectual development of Varoujan, through the articles by K. Beledian and M. Nichanian. The introduction offers an introduction to life and work of Varoujan and a framework within which to read the various articles.Le but du dossier est, d’abord, d’étudier, à travers le prisme du poète arménien Daniel Varoujan, étudiant à Gand de 1905 à 1909, les échanges entre la Belgique et l’Empire ottoman et les expériences d’étudiants provenant de cette région à Gand. Ainsi des études sur des étudiant étrangers (P. De Messemaeker et C. Verbruggen) mais aussi l’attitude de l’opinion publique belge vis-à-vis la question arménienne (H. Alloul et H. De Smaele) sont incluses, tout comme des études sur la vie précaire de Varoujan à Gand (S. Payaslian) et ses publications françaises à Gand (E. Delacenserie). Deuxièmement, le dossier cherche à cerner l’influence que l’expérience à l’étranger peut avoir eu sur la production littéraire, avec les études de K. Beledian et M. Nichanian. L’introduction introduit la figure de Varoujan et son oeuvre au lecteur et offre ainsi un cadre pour situer les études qui suivent.Dit dossier heeft als eerste doel om de uitwisseling tussen België en het Ottomaanse rijk te bestuderen en de ervaringen van studenten uit die regio, aan de hand van het voorbeeld van de Armeense dichter Daniel Varoujan, student in Gent van 1905 tot 1909. Dit wordt behandeld in de artikels over buitenlandse studenten in Gent (P. De Messemaeker en C. Verbruggen) en over de Belgische publieke opinie over de Armeense kwestie in deze periode (H. Alloul et H. De Smaele), naast artikels over het precaire bestaan van Varoujan in Gent (S. Payaslian) en zijn publicaties in het Frans in Gent (E. Delacenserie). Een tweede doel is om te peilen welke invloed het verblijf in Gent had op de artistieke en intellectuele ontwikkeling van Vaorujan, in het bijzonder met de artikels van K. Beledian en M. Nichanian. De inleiding biedt een inleiding tot het leven en werk van D. Varoujan en een kader waarbinnen de artikels kunnen geplaatst worden.Van Nuffelen Peter, Payaslian Simon. Un poète arménien à Gand – cent ans après. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 97, fasc. 3, 2019. Langues et littératures modernes - Moderne taal-en letterkunde. pp. 777-791

Genetic manipulation of phages for therapy using BRED

The alarming increase in antibiotic resistance has placed the focus on phages as an alternative antimicrobial therapy. Recently, the first patient treatment using engineered phages to combat a mycobacterial infection was successfully performed; genetic modifications were made using Bacteriophage Recombineering of Electroporated DNA (BRED). BRED is a simple technique that allows genetic manipulation of phages. The phage DNA and a recombination substrate, with short homology to the target, are co-electroporated into recombineering proficient bacteria promoting high levels of recombination. After electroporation, cells are recovered and plated in an infectious centre assay. Individual plaques are then screened by PCR to identify the mutant phage. The main characteristics of this technique, the advantages of engineered versus wild type phages for therapeutic purposes and the future perspective of BRED for doing such modifications, are reviewed here.Fil: Payaslian, Florencia Pía. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Gradaschi, Victoria. Universidad de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Piuri, Mariana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentin