The Armenian Woman, Minoritarian Agency, and the Making of Iranian Modernity, 1860-1979

by Houri Berberian, Talinn Grigor

Overview

With this book, Houri Berberian and Talinn Grigor offer the first history of Armenian women in modern Iran. Foregrounding the work of Armenian women's organizations, the authors trace minoritarian politics and the shifting relationships among doubly minoritized Armenian female subjects, Iran's central nodes of power, and the Irano-Armenian patriarchal institutions of church and political parties.

Engaging broader considerations around modernization, nationalism, and feminism, this book makes a conceptually rich contribution to how we think about the history of women and minoritized peoples. Berberian and Grigor read archival, textual, visual, and oral history sources together and against one another to challenge conventional notions of "the archive" and transform silences and absences into audible and visual presences. Understanding minoritarian politics as formulated by women through their various forms of public and intellectual activisms, this book provides a groundbreaking intervention in Iran's history of modernization, Armenian diasporic history, and Iranian and Armenian feminist historiography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503629417
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	03/04/2025
Pages:	418
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Houri Berberian is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions of the Russian, Iranian, and Ottoman Worlds (2019). Talinn Grigor is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Davis, and author of The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture (2021).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Min(d)ing the Gap
I. From Photo-Studio Sitters to Organizational Leaders, 1860–1899
1. Ethnographic Subjects and Advocates of Education
2. Transimperial Connections and Disciplinary Power
II. Volunteerism and Revolutionary Benevolence, 1892–1925
3. Volunteerist Ethos and Performance of Solidarity
4. Radical Politics of Charity and Progress
III. The Satirized and Contested New Woman, 1925–1958
5. Charity's Triumph and Patriarchal Reckoning
6. The New Armenian Woman in Action and in Print
IV. Indigenous Feminism and State-Minority Engagements, 1960–1977
7. The Golden Age of Feminism
8. Nation-Community and State-Minority Bonds
Conclusion: Vision Interrupted

Editorial Reviews

"A richly documented, vigorously narrated account of the processes through which Armenian women attained agency and played a role in shaping modernity, both in Iran and along the trans-imperial pathways of the Armenian diaspora, engaging communities in Tsarist Russia, Ottoman Turkey, and the British Empire." —Khachig Tölölyan, Wesleyan University

"This beautifully conceived and groundbreaking history of modern Armenian women fills a gaping lacuna in studies of Armenians in Iran and the Middle East. Working with a vast array of sources, the authors give texture to the multifaceted experiences of Armenian women and a critical re-reading of portrayals of Armenians." —Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, University of Pennsylvania

"Houri Berberian and Talinn Grigor skillfully weave analysis of the cultural production of Armenian Iranian women with direct accounts from the women themselves, inviting us to reimagine Iranian modernity as the product of a pluralistic society. This book is a triumph of collaborative research, interpretation, and storytelling." —Camron Amin, University of Michigan-Dearborn

From the Publisher