Levon Abrahamian

Levon H. Abrahamian (Armenian: Լևոն Աբրահամյան; born January 2, 1947)^[1] is an Armenian anthropologist and historian.

Levon Abrahamian

Biography and career

Abrahamian was born in Yerevan, Soviet Armenia on January 2, 1947.^[1] He graduated from Yerevan State University (YSU) with M.S. in biophysics in 1970^[1][2] and from the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1978 as Candidate of Sciences in Cultural and Social Anthropology.^[2] He joined the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences of Soviet Armenia in 1978,^[3] initially working as a junior researcher until 1988 and then as senior researcher.^[1] In 2005 he headed the Institute's Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies.^[1][3]

Abrahamian has taught at YSU since 1990.^[4][2] He has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh (1994), Columbia University (2001), University of California, Los Angeles (2008), and University of California, Berkeley (1997 and 2015).^[2]

In November 2018 Abrahamian was elected president of the Board of Trustees of the Matenadaran.^[2][5]

Recognition

Abrahamian is a corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (2006).^[1][2] In 2009 Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan awarded him the title of an Honored Worker of Culture.^[2][6]

Research and publications

Abrahamian's anthropological research focuses on ancient and modern Armenia and Armenians, including Armenian identity, comparative mythology, rituals, urban anthropology and the cultures of Australia and Oceania.^[1][2] He has authored five books and numerous papers.^[2]

His two English-language books, Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity (2001)^[7][8][9] and Armenian Identity in a Changing World (2006)^[10] received positive reviews.

Books

• Abrahamian, Levon. Primitive Festival and Mythology (1983). Yerevan: Academy of Sciences of Armenian SSR Press (in Russian)
• Abrahamian, Levon, and Nancy Sweezy, eds. 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 ISBN 1-56859-185-3
• Kharatyan, Hranush; Shagoyan, Gayane; Marutyan, Harutyun; Abrahamian, Levon. Stalinist Repressions in Armenia: History, Memory [Ստալինյան բռնաճնշումները Հայաստանում. պատմություն, հիշողություն, առօրյա] (2015). "Gitutyun" Publishing of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (in Armenian)

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 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, No. 3/4, (1996/97), pp. 263–278
• "Lenin as a trickster" Anthropology & archeology of Eurasia 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 50, no. 3 (2012): pp. 11–50.
• "Velvet Revolution, Armenian Style", Demokratizatsiya, vol. 26, n. 4, Fall 2018