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Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Vartan Matiossian, "The Color of Choice: The Armenians and the Politics of Race in the United States and Germany (1890-1945)" (Brill, 2025)
Description: The extensive research literature on race has paid little attention to Armenians.
Between the two world wars, they had to prove that they were free white persons to ensure their naturalization in the United States, while in Nazi Germany they needed to document that they were stakeholders of the Aryan race to safeguard their existence.
Vartan Matiossian's book is the first comprehensive account of a mostly untold story of dehumanization and racism in Europe and America that enhanced the racial and moral profiling of Armenians as undesirables. The Color of Choice: The Armenians and t...