Abstract
The inclusion of Armenian subjects in Mediterranean Studies has rarely contributed to a more dynamic, cross-culturally integrated vision of the Mediterranean or its adjacent regions. This volume offers an entwined approach to the study of Armenians and the Mediterranean world, broadly defined. Our contributors seek to open the field of Armenian Studies to the broader vista of Mediterranean Studies, but also to the fields of world history, world literature, and world cinema. An Armenian Mediterranean therefore aims to provide a blueprint for an omnivorously comparative, deeply interconnected, vision of Armenian Studies: one that might serve as a model for other area specialists who must necessarily grapple with questions of “inclusion” and “exclusion” within comparative frameworks of their own.
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Notes
- 1.
Many stimulating conversations have informed the spirit and argument of this introduction. There are too many generous interlocutors to thank here by name, but I am particularly grateful to Kathryn Babayan, Sergio La Porta, Karla Mallette, William Gertz-Runyan, Alison Vacca, Dzovinar Derderian, Kevork Bardakjian, Tamar Boyadjian, and Sebouh David Aslanian.
- 2.
See Abraham Terian’s critical edition of Magistros’s poem, Grigor Magistros, Magnalia Dei: Biblical History in Epic Verse by Grigor Magistros, trans. with introduction by Abraham Terian (Leuven: Paris, 2012), 33. See also S. Peter Cowe’s discussion on Magistros’s literary production in the broader context of Armeno-Muslim literary interchange, “The Politics of Poetics: Islamic Influence on Armenian Verse,” in Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam, ed. J. J. van Ginkel, H. L. Murre-van den Berg, and Theo Maarten van Lint (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 384–385.
- 3.
“ Moreover, I could write it for you in lines ending with that magnificent rhyme of the letter nūn,” Magistros boasted. Magistros, Magnalia Dei, trans. Terian, 35.
- 4.
For a succinct overview of Magistros’s life and education, see Avedis K. Sanjian, “Gregory Magistros: An Armenian Hellenist,” in TO E𝛬𝛬HNIKON: Studies in Honor of Speros Vryonis, Jr., ed. Jelisaveta Stanojevich Allen, Christos P. Ioannides, John S. Langdon, and Stephen W. Reinert, vol. 2 (New Rochelle, NY, 1993), 111–130.
- 5.
See Terian’s discussion, Magistros, Magnalia Dei, trans. Abraham Terian, 10–12.
- 6.
Magistros, Magnalia Dei, trans. Terian, 33.
- 7.
Cowe, “The Politics of Poetics,” 384.
- 8.
A notable exception is La Méditerranée des Arméniens : XIIe – XVe siècle, ed. Claude Mutafian (Paris: Geuthner, 2014), which sheds light on how Armenians participated in the political, economic, and cultural life of the medieval Mediterranean. In contrast, the present volume differs in scope (geographic, disciplinary, and temporal) and in its attempt to rethink how we might approach categories such as Armenian history, literature, and visual culture in relation to other comparative fields. In this sense, An Armenian Mediterranean seeks to engage the methods of Mediterranean Studies as much as—and sometimes more than—its geographies and historiographies.
- 9.
On the integration of Armenian Studies among other fields and disciplines, see also the fruitful discussions in “Rethinking Armenian Studies: Past, Present, and Future,” ed. Marc A. Mamigonian, special issue, Journal of Armenian Studies 7, no. 2 (2003). For an analysis of contemporary trends and methods Armenian Studies, and on the continuing importance of linguistic training and philology to the field, see also Valentina Calzolari, ed., Armenian Philology in the Modern Era: From Manuscript to Digital Text, with Michael E. Stone (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
- 10.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” in “The Eurasian Context of the Early Modern History of Mainland South East Asia, 1400–1800,” special issue, Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997): 744–745.
- 11.
Aslanian introduced the framework of World History to the field of Armenian Studies in his study, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
- 12.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories,” 762.
- 13.
Other fields, particularly world literary studies, should find resonance in Subrahmanyam’s “methodological skepticism” regarding the “fitting in” or “leaving out” of area specialists from broader critical debates. For instance, Douglas Robinson, writing of the “founder and greatest exemplar of Finnish National Literature” Aleksis Kivi (d. 1972), has similarly asked: “Aleksis Kivi may or may not be taken as World Literature. I pose this, however, not as a proposition but as a question—is Kivi World Literature?—and a series of theoretical metaquestions: what would it mean for the study of World Literature for Kivi to be taken as World Literature? What can the question about Kivi’s inclusion in or exclusion from World Literature tell us about the institutionalization of WL, its institutional viability as an academic discipline into which scholar/teachers are hired, as the name of an academic department, as the title of a university course, as a section of a bookstore?” Here we might simply substitute “Aleksis Kivi” for the name of any major Armenian author of the last century. See Douglas Robinson, Aleksis Kivi and/as World Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1.
- 14.
Cowe, “The Politics of Poetics,” 385.
- 15.
This blueprint is, and always should be, provisional. It is meant to be suggestive of new present and future directions in the study of Armenians, but these are not, of course, the only directions. For instance, groundbreaking research in the fields of gender, sexuality, and Queer Studies is forthcoming by a cohort of scholars who recently convened at a workshop at the University of Michigan, “Gender and Sexuality in Armenian Studies,” organized by Jeremy Johnson and Kathryn Babayan, April 21–22, 2017.
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Pifer, M. (2018). Introduction: A Movable Armenia. In: Babayan, K., Pifer, M. (eds) An Armenian Mediterranean. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72865-0_1
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