NAASR Announces Winners of 2020 Sona Aronian Armenian Studies Book Prizes

The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prizes for Excellence in Armenian Studies: Prof. Houri Berberian for the monograph Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian, and Ottoman Worlds (University of California Press) and Dr. Lou Ann Matossian, Dr. Vartan Matiossian, and the late Aris Sevag for the translation of Bedros Keljik’s Armenian-American Sketches (The Armenian Studies Series of the Press at California State University, Fresno). The 2020 awards are for books with a 2019 publication date.

English Translation of Bedros Keljik’s "Armenian-American Sketches" Published

Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Berberian Coordinator of the Armenian Studies Program, announced that the English translation of Bedros Keljik’s Armenian-American Sketches has been published as volume 8 in the Armenian Series of The Press, at California State University, Fresno.

Bedros Keljik, rug dealer and immigrant from Armenia, wove an inspiring Minnesota tale

Curt Brown

 

“He succeeded from the start in this venture and in a short time began selling Oriental rugs. The growth of his business has been phenomenal, and he has attained an important position … His rugs are known over the entire Northwest.”

— St. Paul Rotarian, 1915

 

His boots ground down as soldiers with pointed sticks jabbed at him for resting. He was forced to march 40 miles a day. So Bedros Keljik, a 15-year-old Armenian thirsting to emigrate to America, shredded his shirt and wrapped the strips around his inflamed feet.

“A terrible journey, and I shall never forget it,” Keljik told the New York Times five years later, in 1894. “The sun beat down upon us, the ground was scorching, but we had to march on. In two days our boots had been worn off, and the hot ground being unbearable we had to tear off our clothes and bandage our feet.”

A few days later, Keljik and two older brothers were tossed in a prison on the banks of the Euphrates River — “one great dark hole, no distinction being made between murderers, thieves, or so-called political prisoners.”