Published in 2018 by the Armenian Review (Volume 56. No. 1-2 Spring-Summer 2018), Queering Armenian Studies may be the first [*] collection of articles, book reviews, essays/conversations, and stories about Queer Armenians published by an academic press.
The guest editors for this volume of the Armenian Review were Tamar Shirinian and Carina Karapetian Giorgi.
Shirinian, at the time of publication, was a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Co-Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.. Her work investigates the widespread rhetorics of sexual and moral “perversion” in everyday life in the Republic of Armenia, postsocialist queer life-worlds, post-Cold War geopolitics, and the links between political-economy, kinship, and sexuality.
Karapetian Giorgi, at the time of publication, was an Assistant Professor at Antelope Valley College (AVC). Before joining AVC she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pomona College from 2014-2017. Dr. Giorgi received her Ph.D. in sociology and her M.A. in queer studies: gender, sexuality, and culture. She has written, lectured, and delivered presentations on topics such as Armenian female fedayi fighters, tasseography, the Armenian genocide from a feminist perspective, and transnational Armenian female migrant laborers.
We saw this special issue of Armenian Review as an important venture not only in thinking about how sexuality and gender are emerging in a transnational Armenia – a critical endeavor – but also how Armenia itself might be transformed by taking queerness seriously as an analytic framing.
Guest editors Tamar Shirinian and Carina Karapetian Giorgi
Queering Armenian Studies Contents:
Introduction: Self-Portrait as a Queered Armenian Studies by David Kazanjian
Queering Armenianness: Tarorinakelov Identities by Sevan Beukian
Intuitive Knowledge: The Queer Phenomenology of Armenian Matrilineal Rituals of Tassseography by Carina Karapetian Giorgi
A Room of One’s Own: Woman’s Desire and Queer Domesticity in the Republic by Tamar Shirinian
What’s on the Horizon?: Stepping into Queer Futurity as Armenia(s) by Nelli Sargsyan
Zarubyan’s Women by Shushan Avagyan and lucine talalyan, reviewed by Arto Vaun
Deviations: A Translator’s Note on Shushan Avagyan’s Book-Untitled by Deanna Cachoian-Schanz
Moving the (B)order: The Magic that is the Desire to Live a Livable Life, A conversation with lucine talalyan, Arpi Adamyan, Shushan Avagyan, Milena Tadukhepa, Gayane Davtyan, and Anna Shahnazaryan, edited by Nelli Sargsayn
A Note on Cover Art: A conversation with lucine talayan by Tamar Shirinian
‘Their causes are our causes’: a reading and discussion on LGBT issues and Tolerance in Armenia and the Diaspora by Nancy Agabian
Family Returning Blows: A Performance by Nancy Agabian
herstories of divine love by Kamee Abrahamian
To purchase this issue, please visit the Armenian Review’s website.
