Lecturer - Armenian Languages & Literature
About
I am a medievalist and specialist in Armenian cultural history with a focus on the development of premodern vernacular literature. I received my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan in 2014, which awarded me the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award and three Hopwood Awards for creative non-fiction.
My research and writing are centered on how Armenian literature developed alongside neighboring literary traditions, including Persian and Turkish, within shared and contested spaces. Questions of multilingualism, mixed-script writing, and the negotiation of cultural difference inform my approach to studying the past. In this spirit, by decentering monolingual approaches to literary history, my work seeks to contribute to knowledge about cross-cultural dialogism across the literary landscapes of premodern Armenia and its adjacent regions.
I am the author of Kindred Voices: A Literary History of Medieval Anatolia (Yale University Press, 2021) and a coeditor of An Armenian Mediterranean: Words and Worlds in Motion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Ongoing projects
Currently, I’m a team member of Armenia Entangled: Connectivity and Cultural Encounters in Medieval Eurasia 9th - 14th Centuries (ArmEn), funded by a grant from the European Research Council. Led by Zara Pogossian, this project seeks to establish a framework for studying the Armenian plateau and the wider area around it stretching from the south of the Caucasus mountain range to Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia as a space of cultural entanglements between the ninth to fourteenth centuries.
Teaching
My teaching interests include Armenian history, language, and literature; cosmopolitanism and exile; representation and trauma. I’ve previously taught Classical Armenian at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library with Sergio La Porta. Most recently, I’ve developed two new courses: one on 20th century Armenian cinema and another on Kim Kardashian and the Armenian experience.
Affiliations
