Clinging to the Classical: The National Education Council and Armenian-Language Instruction in Constantinople, c. 1860 – c. 1890
Manoukian, a historian of the modern Western Armenian language, challenges two widely held assumptions in Armenian studies about nineteenth-century Ottoman Armenian schooling: that the Armenian National Constitution and its National Education Council were transformative reformers of Armenian education, and that Armenian schools spread Modern Western Armenian from the outset. Drawing on primary sources from Constantinople, she shows that Armenian-language instruction in this period stayed wedded to Classical Armenian (grabar), complicating the standard story of a smooth rise of the modern vernacular.