The Armenian context of the American missionary journal Children’s Herald: Gender, Family, and Society

Abstract

The article examines the Armenian-language children’s magazine Avetaber tghayots hamar (Children’s Herald, 1872–1915), published for the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Edited by American missionaries, the periodical combined religious instruction with representations of American everyday life, education, and culture. The study analyzes the magazine’s ideological, aesthetic, and publishing features, with particular attention to issues of national and gender education and the construction of male and female roles. A central focus is the representation of American family and social models in the Armenian context and the transformations these models underwent over four decades of publication. Using an interdisciplinary approach that integrates quantitative and qualitative analysis, the research examines literary texts and accompanying illustrations through historical-comparative, psychological, semiotic, graphic-semantic, and statistical methods. Quantitative data show that male characters appear considerably more frequently than female ones (57 % versus 20 %) over the magazine’s 43-year history. Content analysis reveals that men are granted broader spheres of action and professional choice, while women are primarily associated with motherhood. In comparative representations of social roles, American and Western women are portrayed as more independent than Armenian women.

Keywords: American missionary periodical, Armenian children’s literature, nineteenth-century press, Ottoman Empire, gender issues, feminism, underrepresented women