“Come, Dear Sister, Let's Unite”: Integrating Feminism and Armenianness in an American Armenian Feminist Collective

This article examines the integration of feminist consciousness and diasporic Armenian identity through an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic study of Armenian Feminists, a Boston-based American Armenian collective founded in 1993. Drawing on the group's history and structure, participant observation, analysis of ritual practice, and focus group interviews conducted in 2024, the study foregrounds how group members, who came to feminist consciousness as young women in the United States, have forged a counterpublic space that can integrate their diasporic Armenian identity with their feminist beliefs. I argue that the group cultivates a feminist diasporic positionality that reclaims Armenian traditions while interrogating their gendered hierarchies, demonstrating how Armenianness and feminism are mutually animating. This case contributes to transnational feminist theory by illustrating how localized ritual and communal practices can produce diasporic feminist formations that challenge both nationalist essentialisms and exclusions of US mainstream feminism.