Common Read Program – AUA Catalog

About the Program

The Common Read Program asks EC first-year students to engage in a shared reading experience. It is designed to build community by creating connections among students and professors while enhancing students’ transition to college, encouraging their intellectual growth and guiding them onto a successful academic path. EC’s Common Read Program supports the University’s mission of integrating teaching and scholarship, fostering creativity, integrity, and community service. The Common Read experience supports Goal Six of the University’s strategic plan—it fosters a collegiate environment that offers services and programming that promotes student engagement and success. EC’s Common Read Program also bridges the efforts of our University and those of off-campus intellectuals and professionals to bring about a positive change to the local community through discussion and dialogue.

Specific goals related to the EC program and curriculum:

First-year students will have the opportunity to meet and begin relationships with the faculty in the department.
First-year students will be introduced to the academic expectations and intellectual engagement that will guarantee their success in the program.
First-year students will have a chance to meet with their peers as well as their sophomore mentors, developing a peer network.
First-year students will have an opportunity to draw connections between topics discussed in EC and the off-campus community.
First-year students will be introduced to some topics discussed in various classes at the department.
First-year students will be able to explore perspectives of faculty who teach in different EC subfields and develop an early idea of their own path during their studies.

About the Reading

This is the first year EC is running the Common Read Program. To launch the program, we have selected a book chapter and three short stories by Armenian women writers. These texts were translated and published in “New Armenian Writing by Women” in the April 2015 issue of Words Without Borders, a prestigious literary magazine for works in translation.

To read the stories, click on the respective links below.

Shushan Avagyan, first chapter from her novel A Book, Untitled
Anna Davtyan, short story “Wide Shot”
Ani Asatryan, short story “I’m Not Going to Die”
Lilit Karapetyan, “Before the Sunrise”

For more information on the program and its associated events, contact Elitza Kotzeva, Assistant Professor of English, email: [email protected]

Events

Mondays 5-6 pm–Zoom Discussion with Mica Hilson ([email protected])

Tuesdays, 4-6 pm—Face-to-Face Discussion with Rafik Santrosyan ([email protected])

Thursdays, 11am—12pm—Face-to-Face Discussion with Viken Barberian ([email protected])

Thursdays, 6-7pm—Face-to-Face Discussion with Vaagn Gouchtchian ([email protected])

Fridays, 4-5pm—Face-to-Face Discussion with Elitza Kotzeva ([email protected])

Fridays, 8-9 pm—Zoom Discussion with Christian Garbis ([email protected])

Talk and Conversations with Authors and Translators will take place in the first part of October. Date and time TBA

Conversations with EC mentors—for more information contact EC senior Yana Gevorkyan ([email protected])

About the Authors

Shushan Avagyan is the author of the novel Girk-Anvernagir (A Book, Untitled, 2006) and Zarubyani Kanayq (Zarubyan’s Women, 2014). She has taught comparative literature courses and translation workshops at AUA since 2006. Her articles and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Women’s Writing, Music & Literature, and Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism. Shushan Avagyan is the translator of Energy of Delusion: A Book on Plot, Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar, A Hunt for Optimism and The Hamburg Score by Viktor Shklovsky (Dalkey Archive), Art and Production by Boris Arvatov (Pluto), and I Want To Live: Poems of Shushanik Kurghinian (AIWA). She teaches translation courses and co-ordinates the Certificate in Translation Program at AUA..

Anna Davtyan is a writer, translator, and photographer. She graduated from the department of English Language and Literature at Yerevan State University. She also studied photojournalism at the Caucasus Media Institute (CMI). Davtyan is the author of a bilingual (Armenian, English) poetry collection – “Book of Gratitude” (2012). Her first novel “Khanna” was released this year. Davtyan’s translation work features poets from the Beat Generation – Allen Ginsberg, W.S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac—and other writers like Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, Carolyn Forché, William Carlos Williams, Richard Brautigan. Her photography series “The Book of the Fox” examines the boundaries of femininity and the crossroad of reality and fantasy. Currently, Davtyan is working on a photography project entitled “On the Seashore of Armenia.” Davtyan’s dramaturgy piece “A Shipload of Carnations for Hrant Dink” was staged by the German theater Krefeld und Monchengladbach in Germany and premiered in September, 2016.

Ani Asatryan was born around the time of Armenia’s independence from the Soviet Union. She is a student at the College of Contemporary Art, where she studies the history and theory of contemporary art. In 2014, her first “unreadable” book was published. This book attempted to break the conventional borders of literature and visual art in order to highlight the ties that exist between literary text, sound, images, and memory.

Lilit Karapetyan (b. 1990) has a degree in art history from Yerevan State University. Her works have been published in literary magazines and she has translated from English, Russian, and Farsi. In 2011, she was awarded the Presidential Youth Prize. She is the author of two collections of short stories, Between the Asphalt and the Sky (2009) and Monologue in Two Voices (2013).

About the Translators

Deanna Cachoian-Schanz is a researcher and part-time literary translator. Originally from New York, she studied literature and creative nonfiction at Sarah Lawrence College, and has since called Armenia, Italy, and Turkey home. She received MAs in Middle Eastern Studies from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice (2014) and in Cultural Studies at Sabancı University in Istanbul (2016). Her articles and translations have appeared in Words Without Borders, Asymptote, The Armenian Weekly, The Armenian Review, Armenia: Imprints of a Civilization, Critical Approaches to Armenian Identity in the 21^st Century: Fragility, Resilience and Transformation (in Turkish translation), Approaches to Genocide: History, Politics and Aesthetics of 1915 (forthcoming, Routledge) and ASAP/Journal: Special Issue on Autotheory (forthcoming). Her doctoral research in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Pennsylvania focuses on the multi-genre “counter-archives” of contemporary (ethnosexual) dissidents and racialized subjects in the Armenian/Turkish contexts. Currently, she is writing a book and performance project with Istanbul-based architect Bengi Güldoğan on the legacies of shared family trauma and redactive methods of archiving.

Nazareth Seferian grew up in India and moved to his homeland of Armenia in 1998, where he has been living ever since. His university education has not been specific to translation studies, but his love for languages led him to this work in 2001. He began literary translations in 2011 and his published works include the English version of Gurgen Khanjyan’s novel Yenok’s Eye. Working on other things during the day, Nazareth continues to spend some of his free time on translation, enthused by the mission of allowing greater recognition for Armenian culture by making more of it available to English speakers worldwide.

Originally from Canada, Adrineh Der-Bogossian has been living in Armenia and translating for local online news media since 2009. She recently obtained an MSc in Communication Studies from VUB in Brussels, Belgium, and currently teaches at the American University of Armenia.

Nairi Hakhverdi is a translator of modern and contemporary Armenian literature. She grew up in the Netherlands, where she attended international schools and earned a degree in English Language and Literature. In the fall of 2009, she moved to Armenia and has been living there since. Her current projects include the translation of modern Armenian classics and the promotion of contemporary Armenian literature.

General Discussion Questions

These three short stories and the first chapter of Avagyan’s book were published in the April 2015 issue of Words Without Borders in a section called “New Armenian Writing by Women: an Introduction.” What is the impression that English-speaking readers get about Armenia from them? Is it a good introduction to Armenian writing by women? Do you think that the stories are representative of Armenian society today? Do you think that Armenian society still faces today the issues discussed in the reading?
If you were to compile a collection of stories to represent Armenian writing (not only by women) today in 2020, what topics and/or stories would you choose?
Are there issues or topics that the texts discuss which are universal and are not only specific to Armenian society? For instance, do women deal with gender bias elsewhere in the world? How are the examples you bring similar or different from the situation in Armenia?
You will have a chance to speak to both the authors and the translators of the stories. This is a great opportunity to ask them about their ideas behind the texts, the process of their writing/translation, the marketing and reception of their work, etc. Make sure you prepare your questions in advance.

Shushan Avagyan, first chapter from her novel A Book, Untitled

How would you describe the style of the writing? What does the text tell us about its own structuring/ordering? Why are certain lines italicized and others not? Why are there no proper paragraphs, transitions, etc. that normally occur in traditional novels? What is a novel? How is this a novel?
Who’s the speaker (the “I”)? What do we know about her/him?
Who are Shushanik Kurghinian and Zabel Yesayan? Who is Sophie?
What “silencing” or “absence” or “erasure” does the text refer to? Silencing of what? Absence of what? Erasure of what?
Discuss censorship: how does it function? Discuss historical cases of censorship (Soviet Union, United States, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, etc.). Is there any censorship today in Armenia? If yes, what kind?
What do the references of the Arlez and the legend of Semiramis symbolize? (Ancient Armenians believed that Arlezes (winged dogs) descended from the sky to lick the wounds of dead heroes so they could return to life, be resurrected.) Who/what is the book trying to “resurrect”? Who/what is it mourning?

Ana Davtyan, short story “Wide Shot”

The figure of the grandmother looms large in the story. What do you think it symbolizes? Why does the author begin her story by observing her grandmother and saying, “Why don’t old people die?” Does she really want her grandmother to die?
What is the role of the mother in the family, according to this story?
Toward the end of the story Davtyan writes, “The Armenian home… is the home that preserved this country as a state and the home that released the smoke of responsibility into the sky, disguised as happiness.” How do you interpret this statement? What does it mean in the context of the story?
There is a clear juxtaposition between the choices of leading village and urban life in the story. What is the author’s position? Give examples from the text.
What does the story imply about traditional marriage? What are the author’s views on the subject?
Why is the story called “wide shot”? Davtyan’s only reference is in the last sentence; she concludes the story, “I stand on the final gravestone to take a wide shot of the scene.”

Ani Asatryan, short story “I’m Not Going to Die”

Why does the narrator introduce the story with a scene where the characters talk about buying jewelry and bread? Asatryan is trying to draw the reader’s attention to a specific topic. What is it? Can you guess what the story will be about based on its initial scene?
The narrator says that she had never paid too much attention to girls working at supermarkets before. Why is she paying attention to the checkout girl now? What has changed for her?
How does the narrator see herself different from the women working at the supermarket?
Upon seeing the little girl playing in the street, the narrator feels the urge to go tell her that “she will never and nowhere else be as safe as she is in this house of hers drawn with chalk on the asphalt in the middle of the courtyard.” What does that mean? What does the narrator really want to tell the little girl? Is this a warning of sorts?
In the previous story the narrator talked about the Armenian home; here we see a picture of a house here–the house drawn with chalk on the asphalt–which serves as a metaphor in this text. How are the home from Davtyan’s piece and the house from Asatryan’s story similar and different?
One more woman appears in the story–the worker from the water company. Is she similar to any of the other women in the text? How?
How do you interpret the narrator’s view of “favorite things” as currency?
What is the message of the narrator in the letter she writes to the girl?
What does the title “I’m Not Going to Die” mean in relation to the story?

Lilit Karapetyan, “Before the Sunrise”

- In the beginning of the short story, Karapetyan paints a snapshot of everyday life in Kars, a previously Armenian city that is currently in Turkey with predominantly Turkish and Kurdish population. The author then says, “Kars begins at the fortress and ends at the front of the door of the Apostolic Church.” What does she mean by that statement?
- The narrator describes herself as a “foreign element” in the city. Why is that?
- The sentences in Karapetyan’s story chase each other, bubble up, and erupt in rich paragraphs. The images she depicts draw the reader in with their repelling authenticity. How does the author’s style contribute to the story?
- Many women appear in this story. How are they similar to each other? Are they different from the women we encountered in the previous texts and how?
- Is the title “Before the Sunrise” metaphorical in some way? What does it mean?