Feminism in Armenian

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