Edited by Kathryn Babayan, Ph.D. 1993.

This book rethinks the Armenian people as significant actors in the context of Mediterranean and global history. Spanning a millennium of cross-cultural interaction and exchange across the Mediterranean world, essays move between connected histories, frontier studies, comparative literature, and discussions of trauma, memory, diaspora, and visual culture. Contributors dismantle narrow, national ways of understanding Armenian literature; propose new frameworks for mapping the post-Ottoman Mediterranean world; and navigate the challenges of writing national history in a globalized age. A century after the Armenian genocide, this book reimagines the borders of the “Armenian,” pointing to a fresh vision for the field of Armenian studies that is omnivorously comparative, deeply interconnected, and rich with possibility.

Contents

“Introduction: A Movable Armenia,” Michael Pifer

“The Age of the Gharīb: Strangers in the Medieval Mediterranean,” Michael Pifer

“Past the Mediterranean and Iran: A Comparative Study of Armenia as an Islamic Frontier, First/Seventh to Fifth/Eleventh Centuries,” Alison Vacca

“A Fish Out of Water? Armenia(ns) and the Mediterranean,” Sergio La Porta

“From ‘Autonomous’ to ‘Interactive’ Histories: World History’s Challenge to Armenian Studies,” Sebouh David Aslanian

“Mapping Jerusalem: Re-reading the City in the Context of the Medieval Mediterranean,” Tamar M. Boyadjian

“Between Anatolia and the Balkans: Tracing Armenians in a Post-Ottoman Order,” Hakem Al-Rustom

“Armeno-Turkish Writing and the Question of Hybridity,” Murat Cankara

“Wandering Minstrels, Moving Novels: The Case of Khach‘atur Abovean’s Wounds of Armenia,” Vahram Danielyan

“Weaving Images: Textile, Displacement, and Reframing the Borders of Visual Culture,” Marie-Aude Baronian

“Diasporic Flânerie: From Armenian Ruinenlust to Armenia’s Walkscapes,” David Kazanjian

“Spaces of Difference, Spaces of Belonging: Negotiating Armenianness in Lebanon and France,” Vahe Sahakyan

“Contemporary Armenian Drama and World Literature,” Myrna Douzjian

“How to Write the History of the Third Republic or How Not to Write It,” G. J. Libaridian

“The Mediterranean Is Armenian,” Karla Mallette