THE ARMENIAN INSTITUTE AND THE ANATOLIA COLLEGE PRESENT

ILLUSTRATED LECTURE

AT THE CROSSROADS OF FAMILY AND INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY: THE ARMENIANS OF MARSOVAN AND ANATOLIA COLLEGE

By Professor Armen T. Marsoobian

Wednesday, 9 December 2009 at 7:30

Nevart Gulbenkian Hall, Iverna Gardens, W8 6TP

(Tube: High Street Kensington)

Admission: £5; £3 for friends of Armenian Institute

Drawing upon family memoirs, letters and missionary accounts, Professor Marsoobian chronicles the interconnections between the history of his family and the history of an educational institution important in the life of the historic Armenian province of Sivas: Anatolia College. The college, founded by American Protestant missionaries in Marsovan, came to play a central role in the cultural life of Armenians and Greeks of the region.

Illustrating his talk with dozens of photographs and drawings from the family collection of Tsolag and Aram Dildilian, Marsoobian traces his family's history from its early days in Sivas to its relocation in Marsovan, where his grandfather Tsolag became the official photographer for both the college and the governor of the province.

The growth and prosperity of the college and the Armenians of Marsovan came to a tragic end in the summer months of 1915 when the Armenian staff and students of the college, along with most of the Armenian population of the city, were sent on the death marches of the Armenian Genocide. Members of the family miraculously survived in Marsovan and witnessed the horrors of the events of 1915 to 1918. Anatolia College, closed in 1922 in Marsovan, would be reborn in Thessaloniki in Greece.

Wine and snacks to follow the lecture.

Photograph of Old Marsovan College Building courtesy of Armen T. Marsoobian.

Armen T. Marsoobian is Professor and Chairperson of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He teaches a variety of undergraduate courses in Philosophy and in the University's Honors College. He has co-edited five books and is working on an illustrated history of his family and their photography business in Ottoman Turkey. He was a Michael S. Dukakis Fellow at the American College of Thessaloniki, a division of Anatolia College, in April 2009.

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