The Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) is pleased to announce that Dr. Victoria Abrahamyan has been chosen to receive the SAS Distinguished Dissertation Award (2020-2023) for “Between the Homeland and the Hostland: (Re)Claiming the Armenian Refugees in French Mandatory Syria, 1918-1946.” Dr. Jennifer Manoukian’s “In Search of Purity: Language, Ideology and Global Intellectual Movements in Ottoman Armenian History, 1750-1915” and Dr. Nora Lessersohn’s “The Sultan of New York: Instructive Entertainment and Ottoman Armenian Politics in Nineteenth Century America (1818-1895)” each received honorary mention.
Dr. Abrahamyan defended her doctoral dissertation at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in March 2023. The Distinguished Dissertation Award was established in 2004 to recognize exceptional achievement in research and writing dissertations in Armenian studies and is awarded every three years. The winner is awarded a $1,000 prize. This year’s competition was for dissertations completed between July 2020 and May 2023. A five-member selection committee of the SAS judged the nominations.
Dr. Abrahamyan’s dissertation, “Between the Homeland and the Hostland,” was judged by the committee to be an exceptionally well-argued and sourced revisionist account of the history of Armenian refugees in the interwar period and beyond, 1918-1946. The committee was impressed with the depth of her sourcing in newspapers during this period. By allowing the voices of the protagonists, both Armenian and Syrian, to speak, she complicated the statist narratives one finds in historical analyses of this period. Past scholarship rarely analyzes the role that Soviet Armenia played in this region. The battle for where the new Armenian national home would be created, in the Caucasus or northern Syria, has been little studied. By studying sources in Russian and Armenian state archives and those of diasporic organizations, Abrahamyan shed much light on this struggle. Finally, the quality of the writing throughout this 565-page manuscript was much admired.
“I am greatly honored and proud of the recognition of my dissertation by the SAS and the selection committee,” said Abrahamyan. “This dissertation is the result of an intellectual journey driven by the urgency and the desire to study the crucial period in Armenian history that shares many striking similarities with the contemporary period, marked by great uncertainties, competition for resources and new trade routes and struggle for power and influence. By utilizing primary sources in six languages, and putting the Armenian refugees at the center of the analysis, this dissertation had an ambitious goal to revise the existing Soviet and Western historiographies. In this regard, the SAS award is the most significant recognition for me. I am delighted to be part of a new generation of scholars who are advancing the field of Armenian studies,” she continued.
“Victoria Abrahamyan’s dissertation is an outstanding example of original research, insightful analysis and rhetorical clarity,” said Dr. Christina Maranci, the president of SAS and the holder of Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies at Harvard University. “It contributes in important ways to our understanding of the reception of refugees from the Armenian Genocide.”
Dr. Manoukian’s dissertation explores the emergence of the standard language known today as Western Armenian. In particular, it examines the intellectual labor that led to the acceptance of this language as the dominant written medium among Ottoman Armenians by 1915. Her study turns away from conventional historical-linguistic treatments of Armenian language history and focuses instead on the social aspects of language use.
Drawing on insights from the fields of historical sociolinguistics, global intellectual history and nationalism studies as well as untapped Armenian-language primary sources, her study uncovers the fundamental role that beliefs about purity played in the formation of Western Armenian. While this focus on purity remained a constant among the intelligentsia throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, she shows how ideas about what was considered “pure” were shaped and reshaped by various actors and interactions with ideas that originated far beyond the Ottoman Empire. “Many thanks to SAS for recognizing my dissertation with an honorable mention. I am delighted to share it with my friend and colleague, Nora Lessersohn,” stated Manoukian.
Dr. Manoukian earned her Ph.D. in Armenian studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2023. Currently, she is a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of History (Center for Armenian Studies) at the University of California, Irvine.
Dr. Lessersohn’s dissertation, “The Sultan of New York: Instructive Entertainment and Ottoman Armenian Politics in Nineteenth Century America (1818-1895),” is a microhistory of Christopher Oscanyan (1818-1895), the first known Armenian-American citizen. Sent by American missionaries from Ottoman Constantinople to New York City in 1834, Oscanyan became known across the United States as “the Oriental lecturer” and “the Turk.” Over the course of the century, he used a range of popular media — lectures, books, newspapers, photographs, tableaux vivant, comic opera and personal costume — to “correct [Americans’] erroneous impressions of the Turks” and to cultivate “mutual diplomatic relations” between his two countries. Through his efforts, he sought not only to create a “friendly” relationship between the United States and the Ottoman Empire based on mutual understanding between equal nations, but also to promote political reform within the Ottoman Empire itself.
The dissertation traces the evolution of Oscanyan’s own political views. Oscanyan’s politics and diplomatic work changed radically in the 1870s, when relations between the Ottoman Empire and its Christian populations became more fraught than ever. From the late 1870s until his death, Oscanyan worked exclusively to construct strong diplomatic relations between Ottoman Armenians and Americans, championing, especially, Armenian immigration to the United States.
“I am honored to receive this recognition from the SAS and the selection committee,” said Lessersohn. “I so deeply appreciate what Oscanyan can tell us about the 19th-century Armenian past, and I so deeply appreciate that the SAS is moved by his life and work, too.”
Dr. Lessersohn earned her Ph.D. from University College London (UCL) in May 2023. Currently she is a Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University and will be the Nikit and Eleanora Ordjanian Visiting Professor of Armenian Studies at Columbia in the spring, where she will be teaching a course called “Leaving the Ottoman Empire.”
The SAS 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.
For membership information or more information on the Society for Armenian Studies, please visit the SAS website or follow SAS on Facebook.
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