Armenian Women in Turn-of-the-Century Iran: Education and Activism Houri Berberian Niklci Keddie first brought to my attention the lack of research carried out on minority women in the Middle East, thus inspiring and encouraging in many ways, directly and indirectly, the fol- lowing exploration of Iranian Armenian women. The study of women in the Middle East has, understandably so, concentrated on the private and public role of the ethnic and religious female majorities-Arab, Iranian, or Turkish Muslim women-rather than on the ethnic and religious female minorities-Jews, Kurds, and Christians, including Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and so forth. Research has been done on minority women, espe- cially in the pre-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire.' In case of the nine- teenth or twentieth century, minority women are treated almost exclusively in studies that deal with the relationship between nationalism, women's movements, and at times, the press in Arab countries.2 Therefore, the history of minority women in the turn-of-the-century Middle East has been written as part of the larger narrative of the nation and women, viewing the role of minority women in the wider context of modernization, nationalism, or the women's movement in the Middle East. In most cases, the literature on minority women has not had as its focus the minority community and its development. In other words, minority women have not been studied for their own sake but rather to understand larger issues relevant to the major- 1 Some good examples are Najwa al-Qattan, "Textual Differentiation in the Damascus Siji//: Religious Discrimination or Politics of Gender?" and Mohamad Afifi, "Reflec- tions on the Personal Laws of Egyptian Copts," in Amira El Azhary Sonbol, ed., Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History (New York, 1996); Fatma Muge GOcek and Marc David Baer, "Social Boundaries of Ottoman Women's Experi- ence in Eighteenth-Century Galata Court Records," in Madeline C. Zilfi, ed., Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era (Leiden, 1997). 2 Some good examples are Beth Baron, The Women's Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven, 1994); Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, 1995). 70