Rachel Goshgarian
Associate Professor and Assistant Department Head
Degrees
- M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University
- B.A., Wellesley College
Teaching interests:
Histories of the Middle East (SWANA), including: medieval Armenia and Anatolia, the Crusades, the Ottoman Empire, and the perceptions and misperceptions of: selves and others, of majoritized and minoritized individuals and communities, relationships between the Middle East, Europe and the US, inter-faith and inter-cultural interactions in the Middle East.
Research interests:
Social history, medieval history, Armenia, Anatolia, and the Caucasus, cities and their hinterlands, Armenians and their neighbors, relics and reliquaries, Armenian and Armeno-Turkish literatures and translations, cultural heritage.
Selected Publications:
Crafting History: Essays on the Ottoman World and Beyond in Honor of Cemal Kafadar, co-edited with Ilham Khuri-Makdisi and Ali Yaycioğlu. Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2023.
Architecture and Landscape in Medieval Anatolia, 1100-1500, co-edited with Patricia Blessing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
“A Code(x) of His Own: Deacon Mikayēl, Armeno-Turkish and the Creative Conventions of ‘Collecting’ in 17th-century Kaffa,” in Essays on the Ottoman World and Beyond in Honor of Cemal Kafadar, co-edited with Ilham Khuri-Makdisi and Ali Yaycioğlu. (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2023), pp. 392-412.
“Introduction,” with Ilham Khuri-Makdisi and Ali Yaycioğlu, in Essays on the Ottoman World and Beyond in Honor of Cemal Kafadar, co-edited with Ilham Khuri-Makdisi and Ali Yaycioğlu. (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2023), pp. 1-22.
“Hromkla/Rumkale in Armenian Sources: the Unreachable Fortress of Community and Cultural Production,” in Rumkale from the Medieval Period to the Present Day, ed. Scott Redford (Istanbul: Ofset, 2023), pp. 82-108.
“Bodilessness, Placelessness and the Arm of St. Thecla: Relics, Politics, and the Female Form in 14th-century Catalunya and Cilicia,” in Sacred Spaces and Urban Networks, eds. Suzan Yalman and Hilal Uğurlu (Istanbul: ANAMED, 2019), pp. 141-158.
“Greater Armenia and the Medieval World,” in Helen Evans, ed., Armenia: Art, Religion and Trade in the Middle Ages (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, and New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018), pp. 81-90.
“Armenian Global Connections in the Early Modern Period,” in Helen Evans, ed., Armenia: Art, Religion and Trade in the Middle Ages (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, and New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018), pp. 171-178.
“Armenian Texts on Futuwwa: Contextualizing the Ambiguities, Hybridities, and Porosities in the Construction of the ‘Ideal’ Man in Late Medieval Anatolia in the Work of Yovhannēs of Erzinjan,” in Javanmardi: the Ethics and Practice of Persianate Perfection, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon. Series: British Institute of Persian Studies. (London: Gingko Library, 2018), pp. 182-214.
“A Stroll through the Quarters of Constantinople: Sketches of the City as Seen through the Eyes of the Great Satirist Hagop Baronian,” Istanbul – Kushta – Constantinople. Narratives of Identity in the Ottoman Capital, 1830-1930, ed. Christian Herzog, Richard Wittmann. Series: Self-Narratives of the Ottoman Realm: Individual and Empire in the Near East (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 213-230.
“Team-teaching as Feminist Praxis at a Small Liberal Arts College,” with Neha Vora. Review of Middle East Studies, Volume 52, Issue 2 (2018): 248-252.
“Space and Place: Applications to Medieval Anatolia,” co-authored with Patricia Blessing, in Architecture and Landscape in Medieval Anatolia, 1100-1500, eds. Patricia Blessing and Rachel Goshgarian (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), pp. 1-24.
“Social Graces and Urban Spaces: Brotherhood and the Ambiguities of Masculinity and Religious Practice in Late Medieval Anatolia,” in Architecture and Landscape in Medieval Anatolia, 1100-1500, eds. Patricia Blessing and Rachel Goshgarian (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), pp. 114-132.
“Her kim tutmaz hak buyruğu, onun helal-i haramdır: Kefe’den Ermenice harfleriyle Türkçe bir metin,” (“‘Whoever does not accept this truth, his halal is haram’: an Armeno-Turkish text from Kaffa”), transl. Banu Griffin, Eski Türk edebiyatı çalışmaları, X (2015):170-189.
“Kaynaşmak ve Ayrışmak: 16. Yüzyılda Anadolu’da Ermeni Yemek ve Ziyafetleri,” (Turkish translation of “Blending in and Separating Out: Food and Feasts in 16th-century Anatolian Armenian texts”) in Haydi Sofraya!, ed. Amy Singer, transl. Pelin Tünaydın (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2015), pp. 55-72.
“Inter-faith Interaction in Late Medieval Anatolia: Coexistence and its Discontents,” in The Middle East in the World: An Introductory Guide, ed. Lucia Volk (London: Routledge, 2015), pp.140-158.
“Opening and Closing: Associations based on futuwwa in late medieval Anatolian cities,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 30, Issue 1. (2013): 36-52.
“Futuwwa in 13th-century Rūm and Armenia: Reform Movements and the Managing of Multiplicities on the Seljuk Periphery,” in A.C.S. Peacock and Sara Nur Yildiz (eds.), The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East. (London: IB Tauris, 2012), pp. 227-263.
“Blending in and Separating Out: Food and Feasts in 16th-century Anatolian Armenian Texts,” Amy Singer, ed., Starting with Food: Culinary Approaches to Ottoman History (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2011), pp. 49-68.
Essays and Roundtables
“Erasure at Home, Erasure in the World: Armenian History in Turkey (and Beyond) and Non-Discourses on Modern Political Conflict,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2022, 54(3), 571-575.
Comment on “Unseeing the Past: Archaeology and the Legacy of the Armenian Genocide,” by Adam T. Smith, Current Anthropology, 2022 63:S25, S56-S90, 25 VII 22.
“Performing the Premodern in The Color of Pomegranates, Imagining and Communicating the Past,” A Conversation between Galina Tirnanić and Nicolas Trépanier, Moderated by Rachel Goshgarian, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 28.1 (2021), 292-316.
“The Limits and Bounds of Medieval Identity: The Life and Times of Hasan Jalal Dawla, an Armenian Prince in Artsakh,” Hyperallergic – Sensitive to Art and its Discontents, Sunday Special Edition on Artsakh. February, 28, 2021. https://hyperallergic.com/619788/the-complexity-of-medieval-identities-in-the-caucasus/
“When Covid Barely Mattered,” Covid Magazine, vol. 8, March, 2021.
Reviews
Review of The Missing Pages: the Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript from Genocide to Justice by Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh (Redwood City, CA: Stanford, 2019), Review of Middle East Studies, Vol 54, Issue 1, June 2020, pp. 118-124, doi: 10.1017/rms.2020.2
Review of Empress of the East: How a Russian Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire by Leslie Peirce (New York: Basic Books, 2017), The Historian, Vol 81: Issue 1 (Spring 2019): 105-106, doi: 10.1111/hisn/13067
Review of Court and Cosmos: the Great Age of the Seljuks (at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 27-July 24, 2016) (May 31, 2017), doi: 10.3202/caareviews.2017.77.
Language Textbook
Kendi Kendine Ermenice (Teach Yourself Armenian [in Turkish]), with H. Şükrü Ilıcak, Istanbul: Armenian Patriarchate, 2006. Revised edition to be published in 2023, (Istanbul: Aras).
Selected Works in Progress:
The City in Late Medieval Anatolia: Inter-faith Interactions and Urbanism in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris), 2025.
Armeno-Turkish and the Space of Language in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Worlds: Manuscript Production and the Circulation of Ideas, Literature, and People. In progress.
Akabi Hikayesi, a translation of Vartan Pasha’s 1851 novel from Armeno-Turkish into English, with Maral Aktokmakiyan and Tamar Boyadjian. In progress. To be completed Summer 2025.
A Stroll through the Quarters of Constantinople: Hagop Baronian and his Descriptions of 19th-Century Armenian Life in the Capital City. Routledge Self-Narratives of the Ottoman Realm: Individual and Empire in the Near East (London: Routledge), with Maral Aktokmakyan, Tamar Boyadjian and Sosy Mishoyan Dabbaghian. To be submitted, September, 2025.
“Living with the Monuments of the Dead in and Around Kars: a Contemplation in Re-Shaping the Visual Languages and Landscapes of Medieval Armenian Architecture in Turkey,” in Inventing Heritage: Dialogues on the Politics of Medievalism between the Balkans and the World, ed. Alexandra Vukovich and Milan Vukašinović. (Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania State Press, 2025). Revised and awaiting publication.
“The Triptych of the 1293 Skevra Reliquary: Weaving History, Politics and Art into a Material Lamentation,” in Entangled Armenia: A Reader of Primary Sources from the Medieval Caucasus, Eastern Anatolia and Mesopotamia, eds. Sara Nur Yildiz and Zaroui Pogossian. Submitted.
Recent Professional Activities:
Reviews and Reconsiderations Editor, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, July 2020-July 2024
Vice-President, Society for Armenian Studies, October 2022-November 2024
Member, Middle East Studies Association, Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association
Board Member, Friends of Hrant Dink Foundation, September 2021-present
Editorial Board Member, Armenians in the Modern and Early Modern World Series, published by I.B. Tauris and Bloomsburg
Assistant Department Head, History Department, Lafayette College. July 2024-present.
Acting Department Head, History Department, Lafayette College. July 2023-July 2024.
Assistant Department Head, History Department, Lafayette College. July 2022-July 2023.
Mentor, Posse Leadership Scholarship Program, Lafayette College, NY21 (Graduating class of 2026). August 2022-June 2026.
Co-led interim course in Senegal, “Global Senegal: Alternative Modernities,” with Prof. Wendy Wilson-Fall, Chair of Africana Studies, Lafayette College, January 2023, January 2019
Faculty Advisor, McKelvy Scholars Program, Lafayette College, July 2013- June 2020. (https://mckelvy.lafayette.edu/)
Mentor, Posse Leadership Scholarship Program, Lafayette College, NY14 (Graduating class of 2019). July 2017-June 2019.
Recent Awards and Honors:
Walter A. and Catherine R. Scott Fellowship, Lafayette College ARC, March 2024.
National Association of Armenian Studies and Research Grant, July 2022
Columbia University Armenian Center Research Grant, June 2022
Lafayette College Research Grant (ARC), May 2022
Calouste Gulbenkian Fellowship in Medieval Armenian History at Bosphorus University, Istanbul, AY2021-22.
University of Chicago, Dumanian Visiting Scholar in Residence, Spring Quarter, 2020. Postponed [indefinitely], due to Covid-19
Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Senior Research Fellowship, Koç University, Istanbul, September 2019 – February 2020
Calouste Gulbenkian Short-Term Grant in Armenian Studies, AY 2019-20
Delta Upsilon Prize for Teaching and Mentoring, Lafayette College, AY 2017-18
Lafayette College Student Government Superior Teaching Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences (by student vote), AY 2016-17
Richard King Mellon Summer Research Fellowship, Lafayette College, 2017, 2018
Lafayette College Research Grant (ARC), used for research in Venice, Summer 2015
Alternate, Fulbright Grant (Turkey), AY 2014-15
Lafayette College Student Government Superior Teaching Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences (by student vote), AY 2013-14