FRESNO — The Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) announced that Houri Berberian’s Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian, and Ottoman Worlds (Oakland: UC Press, 2019) and Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh’s The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice (Stanford University Press) have been chosen as the recipients of the Der Mugrdechian SAS Outstanding Book Award for 2018-2019. An honorable mention has been awarded to James Barry’s Armenian Christians in Iran: Ethnicity, Religion, and Identity in the Islamic Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Established in 2015, the “Der Mugrdechian SAS Outstanding Book Award” accepts nominations for works that advance knowledge and scholarship on Armenian society, culture, and history from ancient times to the present. Professor Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Director of the Armenian Studies Program at California State University, Fresno and a past President of SAS, has generously offered to sponsor the award for the next five years.
According to the selection committee, both Roving Revolutionaries and The Missing Pages demonstrated substantive knowledge and an overall high level of scholarship. The “Der Mugrdechian SAS Outstanding Book Award” covered works published in 2018 to 2019. Berberian and Zeitlian Watenpaugh will each receive a $500 monetary award from SAS and receive a certificate of recognition.
SAS President Bedross Der Matossian commented on the awards stating, “I would like to congratulate Houri Berberian and Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh for this great achievement. This year we received more than a dozen books for the award. All of them were excellent books from different disciplines in the field of Armenian Studies. The level of competition was very high and a testament to the fact that the field of Armenian Studies is evolving in a very positive manner. I would like to thank the four senior scholars of the selection committee who rigorously examined all of the books.”
In her book Roving Revolutionaries, Berberian probes the interconnected aspects of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the Iranian Revolution 1905-1911, and the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and the role of the Armenian revolutionaries. The movements of these Armenians and their participation within and across frontiers provides us a unique global insight into the major transformations that shaped the modern period. Through extensive archival work, Berberian examines the circulation of revolutionary ideas, revolutionaries, and printed material. By doing so she provides a novel approach to our understanding of revolutions and revolutionary movements.
Houri Berberian is Professor of History, Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies, and Director of the Armenian Studies Program at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of a number of articles on Armenians and revolution, Armenian women and identity. She is the author of Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911: The Love for Freedom Has No Fatherland (Westview, 2001).
