LIVING DIASPORA

It is our esteemed pleasure to invite you in joining Melkonian Global Overture, to celebrate 50 Years of Narekatsi Armenian Studies Chair at UCLA.

On January 19, 2019,  MGO will host Living Diaspora, a day of events at UCLA to support the Narekatsi Chair in Armenian Studies and other important language studies programs around the globe. UCLA has an important educational place in our community and the Narekatsi Chair has been contributing to the scholarly exchange in Armenian studies and to the Armenian community for the past half century. UCLA is the only university on the continent conducting research, experimentation, and applied programs aimed at the continued vitality of Western Armenian, which was pronounced an endangered language by UNESCO based precisely on a report prepared by UCLA’s Western Armenian faculty. Today, the program is threatened by class closures of Eastern Armenian due to the lack of public funding, while Western Armenian offers only partial coverage..

Our event looks to ensure that both branches of modern Armenian are taught in a full three-year program, so that we may guarantee the continuity of Armenian language usage in the everyday life of Armenians. It is our hope that we develop a new generation of local-born readers and creators in the language in order to prevent its stagnation. In that spirit, we are also supporting Armenian language studies at other institutions such Padus Araxes Cultural Association which offers Summer Intensive Courses of Armenian language and culture in Venice Italy, and Zarmanazan by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, an innovative Summer Camp offering a Armenian Language immersion experience in a creative and playful world in the Alps of France.