Finding Zabel Yesayan (documentary)

Date: 7 March 2009
Time: 5 - 6 pm
Location: Tumanyan Muppet Theater
Street: 4 Sayat Nova
Town/City: Yerevan, Armenia

The Women's Resource Center and Utopiana will present the screening of the documentary film "Finding Zabel Yesayan" by Talin Suciyan and Lara Aharonian. The 40 min documentary depicts the life of the writer after her move to Soviet Armenia.

By Invitation only, places limited

A History of Armenian Women's Writing 1880-1922 (new book)

Thanks to the reader of my blog AW, I received the info on this new book by Victoria Rowe "A History of Armenian Women's Writing 1880-1922". Seems very interesting. It's now available to pre-order via Amazon, with the release date (paperback) indicated as 4 March 2009.

Below are details via Amazon and Google Book. A preview of 2003 edition of (as far as I understand) the same book (or her PhD thesis) is available on Google Book.

Product Description (Amazon)
This classic, path-breaking volume restores the pioneering generation of 19th and 20th century Armenian women writers to their rightful place in the histories of modern Armenian and Ottoman literatures. The author reconstructs the biographies and bibliographies and analyzes the texts of six Armenian women writers and contextualizes their works in the intellectual and cultural milieus of the late Ottoman and Russian Empires.

(Google Book) The volume focuses on six Armenian women writers-Srpouhi Dussap, Sibyl, Mariam Khatisian, Marie Beylerian, Shushanik Kurghinian and Zabel Yesayian and these authors' novels, short stories, poems and essays. The study contends that Western and Eastern Armenian women writers, while not displaying a uniformity of opinion and vision, nevertheless found inspiration in the activism, writings and arguments of one another and form a literary genealogy of women's writing in Armenian.The study has several objectives. For general readers and those interested primarily in the historical account it provides a chronological description of the formative period of modern Armenian women's writing beginning in 1880 with the publication of a series of articles on women's education and employment by Srpouhi Dussap and concludes with the physical dislocations and psychological traumas of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 and the fall of the first independent Republic of Armenia in 1921.On another level the book concentrates on disentangling the contemporaneous intellectual debates about Armenian women's proper sphere. The author argues that the role of the Armenian woman was central to debates about national identity, education, the family and society by Armenian writers and women writers sought to participate in and guide this discourse through literary texts.

About the Author (Amazon)
Victoria Rowe specializes in Armenian literary history and gender studies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Canada upon completion of her doctoral thesis: The New Armenian Woman : Armenian Women's Writing in the Ottoman Empire, 1880-1915. Her articles on Armenian literary history and gender have appeared in numerous academic journals. She is the editor of translations of the works of Shushanik Kurghinian and Zabel Yesayian and has translated Inga Nalbandian's Your Brother s Blood Cries Out, (Gomidas Institute, 2007). She has taught Armenian literature at universities in Canada and Japan and is currently co-editor of Journal of Armenian History and Literature.

Feminist – first openly feminist magazine of modern Armenia

Published by the Women’s Resource Centre:

“The word feminism is generally not understood in our society. What’s more, the questions raised by the feminist movement are seen as foreign and destructive to the Armenian culture, and the way people perceive feminism is far from what the actual movement represents.

In order to comprehend, recognise and grasp feminist ideas, it is first and foremost necessary to gain a multi-perspective understanding of those principles.

Drawn to this cause, the Women’s Resource Centre has initiated the publication of the first openly feminist magazine of modern Armenia, which will offer the opportunity to discuss and analyze the past, present and future of the feminist movement both in Armenia and in the world. Today there are many magazines that are “for” and “about women” that offer various remedies to become beautiful, charming, captivating, loved, successful, etc. The goal of Feminist is to pay particular attention to the woman, mostly to her psychological, social, economical and political issues, as well as to create a forum where women can express their desires, thoughts, and frustrations.

The first issue of Feminist magazine includes interviews with women from Armenia and Diaspora, and foreign women about their views on the roles of Armenian women. In this regard, Azeri activist Rena Tahirova discusses women’s roles in peace processes. Hoping to run this first attempt into tradition, we are also including information about women who have contributed to Armenia’s social, political and cultural life at various epochs, and in this context we are publishing Zabel Yesayan’s letter to Avetik Isahakian from 1934. In the future issues, we are going to publish excerpts from other prominent Armenian writers as well.

Dear reader, we hope that our efforts in Feminist will help change the various gender stereotypes that exist in the Armenian society.

In solidarity,

Women’s Resource Centre”

In solidarity,

Unzipped: Gay Armenia