Thursday, May 8, 2025, at 7:30 PM EST
In-Person at the NAASR Vartan Gregorian Building, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA, 02478
FEATURED SPEAKERS:
Dr. Houri Berberian, Professor of History & Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies and Director of the Center for Armenian Studies, History.
Dr. Talinn Grigor, Professor of Art and Architectural History at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on 18th- to 20th-century architectural and art histories through postcolonial, race, feminist, and critical theories grounded in Iran, Armeno-Iran, Armenia, and Parsi India. Her books include the winner of the Saidi-Sirjani Book Award, The Persian Revival (2021), Contemporary Iranian Art (2014), and Building Iran (2009).
Presenting the 4th Annual Vartan Gregorian Memorial Lecture at NAASR.
With the newly published The Armenian Woman, Minoritarian Agency, and the Making of Iranian Modernity, 1860-1979 (Stanford Univ. Press, 2025), Houri Berberian and Talinn Grigor offer the first history of Armenian women in modern Iran. Foregrounding the work of Armenian women's organizations, the authors trace minoritarian politics and the shifting relationships among doubly minoritized Armenian female subjects, Iran’s central nodes of power, and the Irano-Armenian patriarchal institutions of church and political parties.
Engaging broader considerations around modernization, nationalism, and feminism, this book makes a conceptually rich contribution to how we think about the history of women and minoritized peoples. Berberian and Grigor read archival, textual, visual, and oral history sources together and against one another to challenge conventional notions of “the archive” and transform silences and absences into audible and visual presences.
Dr. Houri Berberian is Professor of History, Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies, and Director of the Center for Armenian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on late nineteenth/early twenti-eth-century transimperial Armenian history, especially revolutionary move-ments and women and gender. Her books include Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 (2001) and the multiple award-winning Roving Revolutionaries (2019).
A reception and book signing will follow the program.
Vartan Gregorian (1934-2021) was a brilliant educator, humanitarian, and friend after whom NAASR’s headquarters building is named. Born in Tabriz, Iran, he received his secondary education at Collège Arménien in Beirut, Lebanon, and graduated from and received a PhD in history and humanities from Stanford University. After an academic career spanning two decades, including a period as Tarzian Professor of Armenian and Caucasian History at the University of Pennsylvania, Gregorian served as President of The New York Public Library, President of Brown University, and President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
CO-SPONSOR:
Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies at Harvard University