From the early 1860s, when the first Armenian women's journal began publication in Constantinople, to the late 1960s, when the longest-running Armenian women's journal of the post-genocide diaspora folded in Beirut, Armenian feminists actively participated in contemporary social and political developments. Even so, their writings remain scarce and understudied to the present day. Feminism in Armenian explores this first hundred years of modern Armenian feminism through an intergenerational and intertextual study. Tracing the lives and work of twelve public intellectuals, Melissa Bilal and Lerna Ekmekcioglu connect these women's voices to each other and to major contemporary historical moments. As these women developed an intersectional feminist politics for their rights as both women and Armenians, their lives took them from Ottoman Constantinople to the farthest reaches of the globe, including Egypt, modern Turkey, Lebanon, Soviet Armenia, France, and the United States. Most of them also felt the personal and intellectual impact of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Their rich collection of texts-translated from the original Armenian and French-include life writing, fictional accounts, opinion pieces, editorials, personal correspondence, and more. Highlighting the lives and activism of a racialized and diasporic group, Feminism in Armenian allows for a fresh reading of Ottoman and post-Ottoman Armenian history.
Melissa Bilal is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Ethnomusicology and Music at UCLA where she holds the Promise Chair in Armenian Music, Arts, and Culture. She is author, with Lerna Ekmekcioglu, of A Cry for Justice: Five Armenian Feminists from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey. Lerna Ekmekcioglu is McMillan-Stewart Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is author of Recovering Armenia: The Limits of Belonging in Post-genocide Turkey, and, with Melissa Bilal, of A Cry for Justice: Five Armenian Feminists from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey. Bilal and Ekmekcioglu published their first book, A Cry for Justice: Five Armenian Feminists from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, in 2006.
Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration and Place Names Introducing Feminism in Armenian 1. Yelbis Gesaratsian (1830-1913) 2. Srpuhi Dussap (1841-1901) 3. Zabel Asadur (Sibil, 1863-1934) 4. Anayis (Yevpime Avedisian, 1872-1950) 5. Zaruhi Kalemkerian (Yevderbe, 1874-1971) 6. Arshaguhi Teotig (1875-1922) 7. Mari Beylerian (1877-1915?) 8. Zabel Yesayan (1878-1943?) 9. Zaruhi Bahri (1880-1958) 10. Hayganush Mark (1882-1966) 11. Varouhie Calantar Nalbandian (Zarevand, 1893-1978) 12. Siran Seza (Kupelian, 1903-1973) Index
"Women have been writing; men simply haven't been reading. Melissa Bilal and Lerna Ekmekcioglu offer a resounding response to a field that for over a century has ignored women's writing and, even more so, Armenian women's rich history of activism, humanitarianism, and feminism that embedded them within the larger global movements, foremost among them the global feminist movement." - Elyse Semerdjian, author of Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide "By providing us with such a crucial collection of the feminist writings and actions of trailblazing Armenian women in the historically crucial period of 1860-1960, this anthology not only monumentally expands the existing scholarship on Armenian feminists and feminisms, but also importantly intervenes both in the male-dominated archives of Armenian history, particularly that of the Armenian genocide, as well as in the epistemic trends of the west-centric feminist historiography." - Emek Ergun, author of Virgin Crossing Borders: Feminist Resistance and Solidarity in Translation
