De Vita Sua

Dr. Nina Garsoian's memoirs reach beyond the revelation of a multifaceted life beginning with memories of the Paris émigré world with its memories of the vanished society of Imperial Russia into which she was born and moving to the United States to which she was transported as a child and came to participate in the exciting cultural life of wartime New York with its vivid personalities of European refugees. It is also a story of transition and evolution in the academic world to which she turned after an accident made all thoughts of her first intended musical career impossible. As the curator of the first Chair in pre-modern Armenian History at Columbia University, the first female Dean of the Graduate School at Princeton, and through her familiarity with Europe, the Soviet Union and the Orient gained from continuous travels as a scholar and trustee of the Ford Foundation, she witnessed both the changing position of university women and the transformation of Armenian studies away from a purely Eurocentric approach. In so doing she spearheaded a more balanced interpretation of the ancient confrontation between the largely incompatible eastern and western societies which interestingly foreshadowed modern developments. For anyone interested in the effet on people's lives of the events of the 20th century, and the recent history of Armenian Studies, this autobiography is essential reading.