Aronian Book Prizes

Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prizes for Excellence in Armenian Studies

The Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prizes for Excellence in Armenian Studies are awarded annually by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR). Established in 2014 by the late Dr. Aronian and her husband Dr. Geoffrey Gibbs, there are two prizes: one for outstanding scholarly works in the English language in the field of Armenian Studies and the other for translations from Armenian into English. For the Aronian Prize winners, click here.

Dr. Sona Aronian was a scholar and a longtime member of NAASR. She and Dr. Gibbs established the prizes to provide encouragement to scholars and translators.

Authors or publishers wishing to submit books for consideration may contact NAASR Director of Academic Affairs Marc A. Mamigonian at marc@naasr.org.

About Dr. Sona Aronian
Sona Aronian was Professor Emerita of Russian, Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island. She received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Boston University and a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale University. She taught at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Pennsylvania, and at the University of Rhode Island, where she established and directed the program in Russian Studies and participated in the creation of the Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies programs.

With the support of grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), Dr. Aronian carried out archival research in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, and Paris on the Russian modernist writer Alexei Remizov. She also served as contributing editor of a two-volume set of the Russian Literature Triquarterly devoted to the life and works of Remizov as well as a separate volume of his Selected Prose. Additionally, she presented papers on Remizov at several international conferences in the United States and in Russia.

In retirement Dr. Aronian became engrossed in the study of the Armenian language, literature, and culture, and the book prizes are her symbolic participation in the advancement of Armenian Studies. Dr. Aronian also funded the construction of a state-of-the-art language lab at the Avedisian School in Yerevan, Armenia, and she and her husband Dr. Geoffrey Gibbs endowed a URI scholarship in music composition.

Photo: Dr. Sona Aronian, left, in her ancestral town of Zeitun, with fellow traveler Hrant Gulian on the 2009 NAASR Armenian Heritage Trip to Cilicia. Photo by Hrag Marganian.