Monday 29 April 2013

OXFORD ARMENIAN STUDIES - Trinity Term 2013



Armenian Studies Seminar - Trinity Term 2013

Thursdays 5-6:30 pm, Lecture Room 1
The Oriental Institute, Pusey Lane, Oxford OX1 2LE


Week 2 - Thursday 2 May    
Dr Emilio Bonfiglio (University of Geneva)
New Testament Apocrypha in Armenian Literature: Case Study of the Acts of Philip
Dr Bonfiglio (DPhil Oxon, 2011) is Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Geneva, where he prepares an edition of the Armenian version of a New Testament apocryphon, the Acts of Philip. He will present the findings of his research within the wider context of New Testament apocrypha in Armenian literature.


Further Seminars:


Week 3 - Thursday 9 May    
Prof Robert W. Thomson (University of Oxford)
Arabic into Armenian: The Case of Nonnus of Nisibis.


Week 4 - Thursday 16 May  
Prof Thomas F. Mathews (New York University)
The Consequences of Byzantine Icon Cult in Armenia
This lecture is a sequel to the lecture to be on Wednesday 15 May in the Late Antiquity and Byzantine Studies Seminar (Oxford) on the Cult of Icons in the Era before Iconoclasm
Vrt'anes Kert'ol asserts in his defense of images (604-7) that "among Armenians no one knew how to make images, but they imported them from the Greeks."  Even though Armenian churches lacked the icon carrying templon screen of Byzantine churches, archaeological evidence in pre-Arab times confirms the circulation of Byzantine icons in Armenia and Armenian arguments in defense of icons echo arguments made earlier as far away as Egypt. Icon cult was not "Greek" in a narrow sense of the term but widespread in the pre-Islamic Christian world.


Week 5 - Thursday 23 May
Dr Irene Tinti (University of Oxford)          
On the Armenian Timaeus: Language and Authorship
Among the extant ancient Armenian translations of Platonic dialogues, which are anonymous, undated and not as yet critically edited in their entirety, the Timaeus in particular still needs to be globally analysed from a linguistic and traductological perspective. The talk will detail some results of an ongoing research project concerning its language and translation technique especially its Hellenised features–and address the matter of the attribution, showing how the linguistic analysis itself could hopefully contribute to clarify it.


Week 6 - Thursday 30 May
Mr Federico Alpi (University of Pisa)
Grigor Magistros’ Letters: Research Themes and (New) Perspectives
Mr Alpi is spending this Trinity Term in Oxford, preparing a PhD on Grigor Magistros (c. 990 – 1059) Letters. He builds on his excellent Italian language BA thesis with translation and study of Grigor’s three letters on the Thondrakians. He now casts his net much wider, including all of the epistolary. The presentations will concentrate on new perspectives on Grigor and his work, proposed by the speaker.


Previous lectures:

Week 1 - Tuesday 23 April   
Dr Hratch Tchilingirian (University of Oxford)
Regional Conflicts and Future Uncertainties: Armenian Diaspora Communities in the Contemporary Middle East
This talk will present the situation of Armenian communities spread in some 10 countries in the Middle East today, with a particular focus on the diaspora in the Levant. It will highlight some of the key internal and external problems facing the Armenian (and generally Christian) communities and will draw some conceptual conclusions as to how these processes affect identity construction, maintenance and preservation.


Oxford Armenian Studies: Dr Hratch Tchilingirian and Prof Theo M van Lint

Further information:
Theo Maarten van Lint
Calouste Gulbenkian Professor of Armenian Studies
University of Oxford


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