Throughout the last couple of decades, Feminist as well as Armenian
Studies have developed to become two distinct fields of inquiry.
Nevertheless, few efforts have been made to see them in juxtaposition
and apply the theoretical insights of the one to the other. Among such
attempts was the conference “Feminist Interventions in Armenian
Studies/Armenian Interventions in Feminist Studies” organized by Lerna
Ekmekcioglu (MIT) and Melissa Bilal (University of Chicago) at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology on April 7. With the participation
of senior and junior scholars, all women, the conference purported to
bring together experts in various fields and generate critical and
theoretical debates regarding Armenian Studies and the contributions of
feminist thought to it.
The conference sponsored by the McMillan-Stewart Biannual Lecture
Series of the MIT Women and Gender Studies Program; the Institute of
International Education Scholar Rescue Fund; the MIT History Department;
the Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA); The National
Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)/Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation Series on Contemporary Armenian Issues; and
the John Mirak Foundation, in memory of Alice Kanlian Mirak
(1940-2000)—feminist and co-founder of AIWA.
The first panel of the program titled “Feminist Armenian Studies:
From Margin to Center” was opened by the chair, Anna Aleksanyan (Clark
University) who thanked the organizers for this unique endeavor. Later
on, Lerna Ekmekcioglu welcomed the participants and the attendees on
behalf of the organizing committee. Ekmekcioglu defined the conference
as an attempt in the transnational production of feminist epistemology
as it relates to the field per se, and Armenian Studies. She highlighted
how feminist writers and scholars have been hitherto marginalized from
mainstream historiographical works. Thus, she added, the time has come
to situate them in their proper socio-political context. The second
speaker of the first panel was Melissa Bilal, who introduced “Feminism
in Armenian”, a project and an anthology of Armenian feminist writings
of the 19th and early 20th centuries she has been
working jointly with Ekmekcioglu . Bilal paid tribute to the earliest
Armenian feminist scholars such as Nina Garsoian and Sirarpie Der
Nersessian. Both Ekmekcioglu and Bilal emphasized the need to reconsider
conventional narratives of modern Armenian history and demonstrated the
various ways in which this history has been dispossessed of its
feminist component.
The second panel, “Across the Linguistic Divide: Translating a
Century of Armenian Feminist Thought” was chaired by Lisa Gulesserian
(Harvard University) and had four Armenian translators-scholars, Shushan
Avagyan (American University of Armenia), Maral Aktokmakyan (University
of Michigan), Jennifer Manoukian (UCLA) and Deanna Cachoian-Schanz (U
Penn). As the title indicates, the four panelists discussed the
significance as well as the challenges of translating feminist and
particularly Armenian feminist literature. As translators-contributors
to the project “Feminism in Armenian”, all the four participants
emphasized the critical value of deconstructing a language during a
translation as a reflexive exercise to understand the power dynamics
embedded in it. They argued that translating involves the making of
choices and is thus a process of revealing the multiple sovereignties of
the language and identifying its gender-blind spots. They explicated
through examples of Armenian-feminist texts.
The third panel of the program, “Unblocking Memory: How to Rewrite
Armenian History” chaired by Ekmekcioglu, was a personal reflection on
the practical and technical difficulties women face in academia.
Thoughts were offered by Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill (Fresno State
University), Barbara Merguerian (Armenian International Women’s
Association – AIWA), Elize Sanasarian (USC), Houri Berberian (UC Irvine)
and Christina Maranci (Tufts University). Bringing into the discussion
some personal accounts, all the scholars offered a critique of the
often-misogynistic conduct of the American academia. Thus, through
personal narratives, they explained the challenges that women scholars
encounter, whether in community organizations or the broadly defined
field of Armenian Studies. Restraining the academic freedom of feminist
scholars and marginalizing them from the larger discussions is what
accounted for the silencing of their voice in conventional histories.
Melissa Bilal chaired the final panel of the day called “Voicing out
the Critique: How to Generate Countering Expressions”. Susan Pattie
(University of College London), Hourig Attarian (American University of
Armenia), Talar Chahinian (California State University-Long Beach), Arpi
Hamalian (Concordia University) and Mary Papazian (San Jose State
University) argued the importance of multidisciplinary approach to works
on Armenian and Feminist studies. Such a method, they believe, unravels
the silences in the performative languages. In the post-genocide
reconfiguration of gender roles and values, the panelists emphasized the
need to read into the absences in the literature and offer
counter-expressions. The panelists brought about examples from their own
works in order to show the possible ways of detecting and hearing
dissident voices.
All the panels were followed by question and answer sessions.
"The Armenian Weekly," April 26, 2018
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