Levon Abrahamian
Levon H. Abrahamian | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 2, 1947 Yerevan, Soviet Armenia |
| Occupation(s) | Historian, Anthropologist |
| Years active | 1978–present |
| Known for | Research on Armenian identity, comparative mythology, ritual practices, urban anthropology, and cultures of Australia and Oceania |
Levon H. Abrahamian (; born January 2, 1947) is a distinguished Armenian historian and anthropologist.
Biography and career
Born in Yerevan, Soviet Armenia, on January 2, 1947, Abrahamian completed his M.S. in biophysics at Yerevan State University (YSU) in 1970. He attained the Candidate of Sciences degree specializing in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography under the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1978. That same year, he commenced his tenure at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography within the Academy of Sciences of Soviet Armenia, advancing from a junior researcher to a senior researcher by 1988. In 2005, he was appointed head of the Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies at the Institute.
From 1990 onward, Abrahamian has been a faculty member at YSU and has held visiting professorships at various universities, including the University of Pittsburgh (1994), Columbia University (2001), UCLA (2008), and UC Berkeley (1997, 2015).
In November 2018, he was chosen as president of the Board of Trustees for the Matenadaran.
Recognition
Abrahamian was inducted as a corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia in 2006. In 2009, he received the Honored Worker of Culture distinction from Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.
Research and publications
His scholarship primarily explores Armenian identity, comparative mythology, ritual practices, urban anthropology, and cultures across Australia and Oceania. Abrahamian has published five books alongside numerous scholarly articles.
Among his works in English are Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity (2001) and Armenian Identity in a Changing World (2006), both praised for their clarity and valuable insights into Armenology.
Books
- Abrahamian, Levon. Primitive Festival and Mythology (1983). Yerevan: Academy of Sciences of Armenian SSR Press (Russian language)
- Abrahamian, Levon, and Nancy Sweezy, editors. Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity (2001). Indiana University Press
- Conversations Near a Tree. Moscow: Languages of Slavonic Cultures, 2005 (in Russian)
- Abrahamian, Levon. Armenian Identity in a Changing World (2006). Mazda Publishers
- Kharatyan, Hranush; Shagoyan, Gayane; Marutyan, Harutyun; Abrahamian, Levon. Stalinist Repressions in Armenia: History, Memory [Ստալինյան բռնաճնշումները Հայաստանում. պատմություն, հիշողություն, առօրյա] (2015). "Gitutyun" Publishing House of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (Armenian language)
Articles
- "On Schneider's Symbolic Culture Theory", Current Anthropology, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Apr., 1980), pp. 255–256
- "The secret police as a secret society: fear and faith in the USSR", Russian Social Science Review, Vol. 35, No. 3 (1994), pp. 81–95
- "Typology of Aggressiveness and National Violence in the Former USSR", International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Vol. 4, Nos. 3/4 (1996/97), pp. 263–278
- "Lenin as a trickster", Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia, Vol. 38, No. 2 (1999), pp. 8–26
- "The Chained Hero: The Cave and the Labyrinth", Iran & the Caucasus, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2007), pp. 89–99
- "From Carnival Civil Society Toward a Real Civil Society: Democracy Trends in Post-Soviet Armenia", Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia, Vol. 50, No. 3 (2012), pp. 11–50
- "Velvet Revolution, Armenian Style", Demokratizatsiya, Vol. 26, No. 4, Fall 2018