Prof. Rachel Goshgarian Published in Hyperallergic

Rachel Goshgarian, associate professor of history, contributed to a special package published in Hyperallergic, which explores how Armenian cultural heritage is threatened by the region’s conflict with Azerbaijan.

In her piece, Goshgarian looks at the figure of Hasan Jalal, an Armenian leader in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh) and how his personal history tells a complicated story that challenges the modern tendency to assign identity as a fixed thing.

“This short interlude into the life and times of Hasan Jalal Dawla will present a more flexible reading of the dynamism with which some members of the Armenian nobility were able to layer, inscribe, and display various aspects of their allegiances, positions and world views— sometimes via the names they preferred, or the languages they spoke, the clothes they wore, or the kinds of buildings they opted to construct,” she writes.

Hyperallergic is an online arts magazine described as “a forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking about art in the world today.”

• Read the full piece.