SAS announces Best Conference Paper Awards

The Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) recently announced the recipients of its 2023 Best Conference Paper Award: Daniel Ohanian, for his conference paper on the autobiography of Awetikʿ Tʿōkhatʿetsʿi, and Lori Pirinjian, for her conference paper on domestic violence in post-Soviet Armenia. Each of the winning recipients was awarded a $1,000 grant by the Society.

Daniel Ohanian’s conference paper titled, “An Autobiography Written in Captivity: Awetikʿ Tʿōkhatʿetsʿi’s Account of His Own Life, c. 1657–1710,” focuses on the autobiography of Awetikʿ within the general scholarship of early modern captivity narratives. Ohanian analyzes four aspects of the autobiography: cross-cultural contact, self-fashioning, authorship and readership.

Ohanian is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He holds a B.A. and M.A. from York University in Canada and an M.A. from Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey. A specialist in Ottoman-Armenian history from 1660 to 1930, he has published articles in the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Genocide Studies International and Turcica: Revue d’études turques. Ohanian’s conference paper grew out of his dissertation research, which focuses on the spread of Roman Catholicism among Ottoman Armenians around 1700. His paper was presented as part of the SAS-sponsored panel (at the 2021 MESA annual meeting) “Early Modern Mobilities: People, Animals, and Objects within and beyond the Ottoman Empire.”

Lori Pirinjian’s conference paper titled “From Anti-Genderism to Law: An Analysis of Domestic Violence in Post-Soviet Armenia” addresses issues with the law entitled “On the Prevention of Family Violence, Protection of Persons Subjected to Family Violence, and the Restoration of Family Cohesion” that the government of the Republic of Armenia recently passed. What was initially presented by Armenia’s Coalition to Stop Violence Against Women to the Armenian Parliament quickly developed into a law primarily concerned with the preservation of patriarchal values under the auspices of the maintenance of traditional Armenian family structure.

Pirinjian is a doctoral candidate in Armenian Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA. She holds a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Studies from the University of San Francisco and an M.A. in Anthropology from San Francisco State University. Pirinjian’s research at UCLA, as well as the topic of this conference paper, centers on Armenia’s 2017 Domestic Violence law.

SAS President Christina Maranci congratulated both awardees: “We are proud to fund such excellent graduate students. The nature and the depth of their work demonstrate the multi-disciplinary aspect of Armenian Studies as a field of inquiry. I would like to encourage all those who are interested in the activities of SAS to join us in supporting such promising young scholars.”

The Society of Armenian Studies is an international body composed of scholars and students whose aims are to promote the study of Armenian culture and society, including history, language, literature and social, political and economic questions; to facilitate the exchange of scholarly information pertaining to Armenian studies around the world; and to sponsor panels and conferences on Armenian studies.

The Society of Armenian Studies would like to thank the Best Conference Paper Committee for reviewing all the submissions and selecting the winning papers.

The SAS Best Conference Paper Award was made possible through the generous institutional support of the Armenian Studies Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies, University of California, Irvine; the Hovannisian Chair of Modern Armenian History, University of California, Los Angeles; the Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art & Architecture, Tufts University; the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR); the Armenian Communities Department, Gulbenkian Foundation; the Armenian Studies Program, California State University, Fresno; the Institute of Armenian Studies, University of Southern California; AGBU Nubar Library, Paris; the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center; and the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute.

If you are interested in contributing to support the SAS award and grant funds, please contact Prof. Christina Maranci at cmaranci@fas.harvard.edu.

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The Society for Armenian Studies

The Society for Armenian Studies is an international body, composed of scholars and students, whose aims are to promote the study of Armenian culture and society, including history, language, literature and social, political and economic questions; to facilitate the exchange of scholarly information pertaining to Armenian studies around the world; and to sponsor panels and conferences on Armenian studies.