BELMONT, Mass. — The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) is pleased to announce the 2026 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prizes for Excellence in Armenian Studies, awarded to Dr. Houri Berberian and Dr. Talinn Grigor for The Armenian Woman, Minoritarian Agency, and the Making of Iranian Modernity, 1860–1979 (Stanford University Press) and Tenny Arlen and Dr. Jesse Arlen for To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here? (Tarkmaneal Press). The 2026 awards are for books with a 2025 publication date.
Berberian is Professor of History, Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies, and Director of the Center for Armenian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her books include Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 (2001) and Roving Revolutionaries (2019), a 2020 Aronian Book Prize winner. Grigor is Professor of Art and Architectural History at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of the winner of the Saidi-Sirjani Book Award, The Persian Revival (2021), as well as Contemporary Iranian Art (2014), and Building Iran (2009).
The Armenian Woman, Minoritarian Agency, and the Making of Iranian Modernity offers the first history of Armenian women in modern Iran. Foregrounding the work of Armenian women’s organizations, the authors trace minoritarian politics and the shifting relationships among doubly minoritized Armenian female subjects, Iran’s central nodes of power, and the Irano-Armenian patriarchal institutions of church and political parties. Engaging broader considerations around modernization, nationalism, and feminism, it stands as a rich contribution to how we think about the history of women and minoritized peoples.
By email, the authors stated that “We are deeply honored and grateful to receive the 2026 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize from NAASR. This recognition affirms the significance of scholarship that centers Armenian women’s critical role in shaping Armenian history. That it resonates with scholars, students, and readers invested in these questions offers encouragement that such histories remain vital to our collective understanding. Thank you to NAASR, the selection committee, and all who continue to sustain the intellectual community that makes work like ours possible.”
Dr. Jesse Arlen is Lecturer in Armenian Studies at Harvard University and previously served as the director of the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center at the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America. He is the co-author of Odes of Saint Nersess the Graceful: Annotated Translation (Tarkmaneal Press, 2024). The late Tenny Arlen grew up in San Luis Obispo, CA, and graduated from UCLA in 2013. In 2015, she was admitted to the University of Michigan’s doctoral program in Comparative Literature with a plan to study French and Armenian symbolist poetry, but she passed away in a car accident in the summer of 2015 before beginning the program.
