Feminism in Armenian: Lives and Texts Through Empire, Genocide, Diaspora

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.