WWAC to present talk on ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Armenia

BRATTLEBORO — On Friday, Sept. 14, at the Centre Congregational Church, 193 Main St., Windham World Affairs Council, in another of its monthly talks, will be shining a light on Armenia, a small landlocked country located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia.

It is a country that has been through a very remarkable process in this past year, a “Velvet Revolution.”

In April and May of 2018, weeks of mass, nonviolent, decentralized, and creative civil disobedience forced a dysfunctional and corrupt administration out of office.

To understand how this momentous change was accomplished without violence, Nelli Sargsyan, an assistant professor at Marlboro College and a native of Yerevan, Armenia, will talk about how it happened.

Professor Sargsyan has entitled her talk, “The Importance of Feminist Knowledge in Political Change: The Case of 'Velvet Revolution' in Armenia.”

She has just returned from a visit to Yerevan, and will discuss how Armenian feminists have been working for decades toward “a life of collective care” that prepared the country for the events of 2018. She will highlight their key role in creating the environment in which a “revolution of love and solidarity” could succeed.

Sargsyan's individual work on feminist political and artistic work has appeared in journals including Feminist Formations and Armenian Review and on online platforms such as Socioscope.

Her collaborative work on different forms of violence and working together to counter them has appeared on online platforms such as ARTMargins and Public Seminar.

The talk, as always, will be free and open to the public. There will be coffee, tea, and conversation from 7 p.m., and the talk will begin promptly at 7:30.

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