1962

Nina Garsoïan (1923-), Gevork M. Avedissian Professor Emerita of Armenian History and Civilization. Garsoian taught at Columbia from 1962 and was the first female professor to receive tenure in the department in 1969 where she taught until she retired in 1993. She is recognized as one of the leading scholars of Byzantine and Armenian history and has received numerous prizes for her work. One of Garsoïan’s major scholarly contributions was to emphasize in various studies the significance of Persian and Anatolian influences on the development of Armenian history. Read an excerpt from Garsoïan’s memoir De Vita Sua.