Kevin Ginosian grew up in Glendale, California where he attended Crescenta Valley High School, California State University, Northridge, and is now a Ph.D candidate at the University of Arizona in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English. Kevin is the son of two Persian-Armenian parents. His mother moved to the Boston, Massachusetts from Tehran, Iran when she was young and moved again as a teenager to Los Angeles, California. Kevin's father grew up in Tehran, Iran where he fled as a refugee to several countries before finally settling in Los Angeles, California. Growing up in Glendale he is certainly a part of the Armenian Diaspora community. He participated in local Armenian Sports Chapters and Armenian Youth Federation camps. This early engagement with his culture helped Kevin develop an identity that he first saw as dualistic. On one hand, he had an American identity which he experienced largely in public schools. On the other hand, he practiced Armenian culture through his home and cultural organizations. However, he found that this duality is not a comprehensive representation of his identity. The further back the lineage goes the more complex the history becomes. This website is an effort to acknowledge these complex histories, talk about them, archive them, and ultimately use them to educate whoever is interested in the Armenian diaspora. His hope is that this website can be regularly used in schools that have high population of Armenian students. Ultimately, this is a tool that can help foster critical thinking by making students think about their identity and how their social and political positions in society are deeply connected to their culture and family heritage.

This video describes, in further detail, my thought process while making this website.