Vol. XLV No. 186 Spring 2006
This edition of Ararat seeks to understand Karabagh after the recent conflict that left tens of thousands dead and hundreds and thousands displaced. With Neery Melkonian as guest editor, diasporan Armenians join forces with local and Yerevan Armenians, as well as with non-Armenians, to explore Karabagh through analysis and through cultural creation in a thought-provoking array of articles, discussions, art, film, fiction and reviews. As Melkonian stresses: "Absent also are stereotypical renderings of Karabagh as the 'aggressor' or 'victor'...What you have instead are sober exercises of the imagination, an imperfect utopia for freedom(s) which serve as a sketch for weaving a new type of Karabagh rug. A rug that is presently forming the endless; at once utilitarian and abstract; drifting between the fictional and the factual; shifting the traveler's itinerant but nevertheless arriving to a place that separates and connects us simultaneously."
