Carpet Weaving Practices in Soviet and Post-Soviet Armenia

Speaker: Hasmik Petrosyan, PhD student, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of RA, ARISC Fellow

Date & Time: Friday, September 27, at 7pm Yerevan, 11:00am US EDT

Zoom: https://bit.ly/4d3Fgjz

(Registration required)

The presentation summarizes the field research conducted in Ijevan and four surrounding villages. This area is a unique case study for observing carpet weaving practices. In 1964, an all-Union carpet weaving factory was established in the city of Ijevan (Tavush region). By the 1980s, the factory had become the third-largest carpet manufacturer in the USSR and the third-largest taxpayer in the Armenian SSR. Most of the workforce comprised women from Ijevan and surrounding villages who had previously been part of the peasantry and included in the working class created by the state. The research analyzes the oral histories of the local people to explore changes in the social and cultural life of the society.

Hasmik Petrosyan is a PhD student at the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia. Her research interests focus on the practices of carpet weaving in Soviet and post-Soviet Armenia. Hasmik Petrosyan has experience researching carpet collections at the Ethnography Museum of Armenia and the History Museum of Armenia. She observed the artifacts to study the skills of carpet weaving.

Hasmik Petrosyan is also an ARISC Fellow who had been awarded the ARISC Small Grant. This event is sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). The lectures are free and open to the public. Learn more at www.arisc.org

ARISC does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, medical condition, ancestry, marital status, education, age, income, socio-economic status, or status as a covered veteran.