Paraskevi Kyrias, Albania, and the US at the Paris Peace Conference

| In 1919, Paraskevi Kyrias went to Paris to advocate for Albanian independence. As a woman in the overwhelmingly masculine space of international diplomacy, she faced sexism and unwanted romantic overtures. Nevertheless, she called on her connections within a global Protestant community, her life in diaspora in the United States, and her experiences at the elite Constantinople Girls' School to play a unique role in the Albanian campaign for independence after World War I. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Nevila Pahumi about Kyrias' story, her leadership of the early Albanian women's movement, and the diary of her experiences in Paris she left behind. We also trace the history of this remarkable woman after 1919, as she and her family were repudiated by a secularizing Albanian state determined to exise Protestant activism from their national history -- until she was once again remade as a feminist icon in the last years of her life.


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In 1919, Paraskevi Kyrias went to Paris to advocate for Albanian independence. As a woman in the overwhelmingly masculine space of international diplomacy, she faced sexism and unwanted romantic overtures. Nevertheless, she called on her connections within a global Protestant community, her life in diaspora in the United States, and her experiences at the elite Constantinople Girls' School to play a unique role in the Albanian campaign for independence after World War I. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Nevila Pahumi about Kyrias' story, her leadership of the early Albanian women's movement, and the diary of her experiences in Paris she left behind. We also trace the history of this remarkable woman after 1919, as she and her family were repudiated by a secularizing Albanian state determined to excise Protestant activism from their national history--until she was once again remade as a feminist icon in the last years of her life.




Contributor Bios

Nevila Pahumi works on the history of women's education and their emergence in the public sphere in the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Balkans. She graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor with a PhD in History in 2016, and between 2016-2018 she held the Alexander Nash Fellowship in Albanian Studies at UCL's School of Slavonic and Southeast European Studies. She has published two-dissertation related articles in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies and CLIO and taught a range of topics on Eastern Europe including women, gender, and sexuality after socialism. Her research and writing have been generously supported by an IIE Fulbright Fellowship, the Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, as well as a combination of research and writing grants from the University of Michigan's Weiser Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East Eursian Studies, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Rackham Graduate School.
Susanna Ferguson is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at Smith College. She writes and teaches on the history of gender, sexuality, and political thought in the modern Arab world.

Credits

Episode No. 490
Release Date: 21 January 2021
Recording Location: Charlottesville, VA / Northampton, MA
Sound production by Susanna Ferguson and Chris Gratien
Music: "Chuperlika," Music of the Balkans, Gogofski; Eduardo Vandaa - VALSES DE PARIS; Henry King and his Hotel Pierre Orch - April in Paris; Marko Melkon and Nick Doneff - Geozlerinden Bellidir
Special thanks to Sam Dolbee
Images and bibliography courtesy of Nevila Pahumi


Further Listening
Marilyn Booth & Nova Robinson 335
10/8/17
Arab Feminism in Periods of Transition
Dimitris Stamatopoulos 156
5/24/14
Balkan Historiographies and the Legacies of Empire
Ellen Fleischmann & Christine Lindner 230
3/12/16
Women and the American Protestant Mission in Lebanon
Adam Becker 301
2/21/17
Assyrians, Evangelicals, and Borderland Nationalism
Jennifer Manoukian 174
9/30/14
Education, Politics, and the Life of Zabel Yessayan

Images

Excerpt from Kyrias' Diary, dated July 21, 1919, in which she talks about her visit with Mary Mills Patrick, author of "Fourteen Reasons for an American Mandate Over Turkey." Source: Albanian State Archives


Excerpt from Kyrias' Diary, dated 13 May 1919, in which she talks explicitly about her harassment, as read and discussed in the podcast. Source: Albanian State Archives
Source: Mary Mills Patrick, A Bosporus Adventure: Istanbul Woman's College 1871-1924, (Stanford University Press, 1934, 244).

Select Bibliography


The publication of Nevila Pahumi's translation of "The Diary of a Protestant Diplomate: Paraskevi Kyrias, the United States and Albania at the Paris Peace Conference" is forthcoming. Consult the list below for further reading.

Barbara Reeves-Ellington, “Constantinople Woman’s College: Constructing Gendered, Religious, and Political Identities at an American Institution in the Near East,” Women’s History Review 24, no. 25, (2015): 53-71.

Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Domestic Frontiers: Gender, Reform, and American Interventions in the Ottoman Balkans and the Near East. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts, Press, 2012.

Ömer Turan, “American Protestant Missionaries and Monastir, 1912-1917: Secondary Actors in the Construction of Balkan Nationalisms.” Middle Eastern Studies 36, no. 4 (2000): 119-136.

Mona L. Siegel, Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights After the First World War, Columbia University Press, 2020.

Mary Mills Patrick, “Fourteen Reasons for an American Mandate over Turkey,” Outlook, 123 (September 1919) 32-33.

Nevila Pahumi, “Constructing Difference: American Protestantism, Christian Workers, and Albanian-Greek Relations in Late Ottoman Europe,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 36, 2 (2018): 293-329.

Nevila Pahumi, “Which Feminism will be Ours?’ Reframing the Women’s Movement in Post Ottoman Albania.” CLIO Women, Gender, and History 48, 2 (2020): 133-152. [English translation of French-language edition]

Larry Wolff, Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe, Stanford University Press, 2020.

Mary Mills Patrick, A Bosporus Adventure: Istanbul Woman’s College, Stanford University Press, 1934.

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