Project MUSE®: Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 30 (2025) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of the Society for Armenian StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies2667-00380747-9301Latest articles in Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Illuminating the Afterlife: The Symbolism of Light and the Transmission of Forms in Medieval Ahlat
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979155
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Situated on the northwestern shore of Lake Van in present-day Turkey, the city of Ahlat is known for the Meydan cemetery (fig. 1). This historic Islamic cemetery, located on the outskirts of its medieval center, is home to hundreds of exquisitely adorned funerary stelae.1 These monuments, dating from the late twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, were crafted from reddish-brown tuff and sometimes exceed two meters in height.2 Their
Fig 1
View of the Meydan cemetery. Photo by the author.
[AI Generated Alt Text] Rows of tall weathered stone pillars with carved geometric patterns and inscriptions standing in a grassy field under a partly cloudy sky
surfaces are richly adorned with geometric and stylized vegetal
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmallIlluminating the Afterlife: The Symbolism of Light and the Transmission of Forms in Medieval Ahlat2026-01-08text/htmlen-USIlluminating the Afterlife: The Symbolism of Light and the Transmission of Forms in Medieval Ahlat2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®1192162026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08"Extremely Ugly" Manuscripts and Why We Should Still Study Them
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979156
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In 1935 Artavazd Surmeyan, archbishop of Aleppo's Armenian prelacy, published the first of two catalogs recording the manuscripts within the collections and constellation of the Church of the Forty Martyrs (Քառասուն Մանկունք).1 Described by the author as a solo labor of love, his catalog stands out among its peers—a handful of institutional catalogs printed before it, and dozens published after it—for its effusive, frank, and even romantic descriptions of manuscripts.2 For example, in his entry for ms 15, a seventeenth-century gospel book from Aleppo, Surmeyan seems to relish in the overwhelming sensory experience of looking. He writes:
The ornamental part is flawless—the art has been transformed with light with
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmall"Extremely Ugly" Manuscripts and Why We Should Still Study Them2026-01-08text/htmlen-US"Extremely Ugly" Manuscripts and Why We Should Still Study Them2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®1689832026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08Knowledge and Power: Sibyls and Amazons in a Seventeenth-Century Armenian Manuscript
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979157
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The seventeenth-century Armenian printer, translator, and ambassador Giovanni Molino—known in Armenian as Hovhannēs Ankiwrats'i (Յովհաննէս Անկիւրացի)—is perhaps best known for his comprehensive Turkish-Italian dictionary, published in 1641.1 However, Molino also produced a lesser-studied set of translations and commentaries in Armenian, addressing eclectic subjects ranging from geography to precious stones and angels. This article will examine two of Molino's Armenian discourses, both contained within a seventeenth-century manuscript held at the Library of Congress (loc) in Washington dc.2 Each text concerns a group of powerful, ancient women: sibyls (ancient Greek prophetesses) and Amazons (ancient Greek
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmallKnowledge and Power: Sibyls and Amazons in a Seventeenth-Century Armenian Manuscript2026-01-08text/htmlen-USKnowledge and Power: Sibyls and Amazons in a Seventeenth-Century Armenian Manuscript2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®1403052026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08In Search of "Monsieur Pierre": Recovering Bedros Srabian in Teotig's Printed Archive-in-Exile
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979158
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End of autumn 1922. Like so many others, I was planning to depart from Constantinople alongside the Director of the Armenian Section of the Information Bureau (Տեղեկատու Դիւան),1 Arshag Alboyadjian,2 whom I visited frequently with the aim of perusing the contents of several libraries deposited there by their owners for safekeeping. One day, I came across the first two editions of a handwritten bimonthly journal that bore the name Dzaghgots (Ծաղկոց, or Garden of Flowers) and had been published on November 6, 1849 by the students of the Lycée of Scutari (Սկիւտարի Ճեմարան)3 whose names4 … were mentioned at the back of the second issue … [The journal] was presented in a large format with two columns per page [in]
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmallIn Search of "Monsieur Pierre": Recovering Bedros Srabian in Teotig's Printed Archive-in-Exile2026-01-08text/htmlen-USIn Search of "Monsieur Pierre": Recovering Bedros Srabian in Teotig's Printed Archive-in-Exile2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®1931592026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08Revisiting Art World Moments through the Kinship and Archive(s) of Dikran Kelekian
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979159
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Life stories have the potential to trigger the imagination in a way that most post-colonial studies do not.1 Arnold and Blackburn begin Telling Lives in India by asserting their popular appeal but ask: "How might they nevertheless differ in content, form and intention from one society to another, or from one age to another?"2 Using this question as a prompt, this essay reappraises the life story of a well-known but little-studied art and antiquities dealer named Dikran Kelekian. It argues for appreciating the specificity of his experience as an Armenian Ottoman—or a member of a "part-society"—at a very turbulent moment in the community's history. In doing so, we reassess not only Kelekian but also the broader art
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmallRevisiting Art World Moments through the Kinship and Archive(s) of Dikran Kelekian2026-01-08text/htmlen-USRevisiting Art World Moments through the Kinship and Archive(s) of Dikran Kelekian2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®1736672026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08Who Is the Modern Diasporic Artist? Intentionality Markers and Centrifugal Method for Armenian Art History
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979160
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Every Friday morning between September and December 1936, art historian Sirarpie Der Nersessian (1896–1989) caught the train at Wellesley College to deliver a talk at New York's Pierpont Morgan Library from 2:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon.1 Entitled "Armenian Illustrated Manuscripts," this set of fifteen lectures co-organized by the library and New York University became the first course on Armenian art offered
Fig 1
Inna Garsoïan, Empty Harbor, 1943. Oil on canvas, 19 3/8" x 24 5/8". Gift of Nina Garsoïan, 1988.0027.003, Nantucket Historical Association.
[AI Generated Alt Text] Painting of a wooden dock along a blue harbor with a green warehouse on the left, a white boat in the water, and a pale sky
in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmallWho Is the Modern Diasporic Artist? Intentionality Markers and Centrifugal Method for Armenian Art History2026-01-08text/htmlen-USWho Is the Modern Diasporic Artist? Intentionality Markers and Centrifugal Method for Armenian Art History2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®1837012026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures, and Artists by Michael Malek Najjar (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979161
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Michael Malek Najjar's Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures, and Artists provides an extensive and comprehensive introduction to the Middle Eastern American theater landscape, introducing readers to a multifaceted and diverse community of creators and their productions. This volume gives voice and space to theater and performance that is often marginalized from more dominant or mainstream conversations on "American" theater.Najjar's introductory chapter emphasizes the complex diversity of the Middle Eastern American community, signaling the ambitious task of the volume itself. The book begins by acknowledging the more than twenty countries that comprise what has become classified as the Middle
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmallMiddle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures, and Artists by Michael Malek Najjar (review)2026-01-08text/htmlen-USMiddle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures, and Artists by Michael Malek Najjar (review)2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®71782026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08A War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut by Nadine A. Sinno (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979162
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In her engaging and comprehensive analysis of recent graffiti making in Beirut, Nadine Sinno engages the city's "eclectic visual culture" (21) with particular attention to its political nature. Sinno constructs the political in a broad sense, considering graffiti that engages with gender, sexuality and environmental concerns in addition to that which confronts sectarianism, revolutionary movements, and regional conflict. She carefully situates her analysis within the broader literature on the visual culture of the Arab world, a strategy that allows important scholarship on street art in countries such as Egypt and Palestine, for example, to provide context for her focus on the graffiti produced in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmallA War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut by Nadine A. Sinno (review)2026-01-08text/htmlen-USA War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut by Nadine A. Sinno (review)2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®90392026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08Re-Thinking Late Antique Armenia: Historiography, Material Culture, and Heritage ed. by Adrien Palladino et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979163
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This edited volume presents an exceptional array of scholarly papers that explore Armenian art and culture in Late Antiquity, while tracing the evolution of academic discourse on the subject from the nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Focusing on a distinct historical period within a defined geographic context, the volume offers both a detailed analysis of late-antique Armenian art and architecture and a critical examination of the methodological approaches later applied to this era. More specifically, it investigates how colonialist discourse, framed through a center-periphery lens, has shaped the study of Armenian material culture. With this dual focus, the volume not only provides new insights into the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmallRe-Thinking Late Antique Armenia: Historiography, Material Culture, and Heritage ed. by Adrien Palladino et al. (review)2026-01-08text/htmlen-USRe-Thinking Late Antique Armenia: Historiography, Material Culture, and Heritage ed. by Adrien Palladino et al. (review)2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®107792026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08A Golden Milestone: Fifty years of the Society for Armenian Studies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979167
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The fiftieth anniversary of the Society for Armenian Studies (sas) is a momentous juncture. It signifies not just time but also commitment, vision, and impact. As we observe this anniversary, we pause to reflect on a half-century of scholarly pursuits and community building, intellectual resilience, and evolution in the face of new theoretical and methodological propositions as well as seismic global realignments and upheavals in and out of the Armenian world, including Armenian independence, shifts in diasporic demographics, diaspora-homeland vicissitudes, and, most recently, catastrophic developments in Artsakh.Founded in 1974 by leading scholars in the field—Nina Garsoïan, Richard Hovannisian, Dickran Kouymjian
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/908/image/coversmallA Golden Milestone: Fifty years of the Society for Armenian Studies2026-01-08text/htmlen-USA Golden Milestone: Fifty years of the Society for Armenian Studies2026-01-082026TWOProject MUSE®95992026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-08