James R. Russell is Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies and a faculty associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. His most recent books are Bosphorus Nights: The Complete Lyric Poems of Bedros Tourian, Armenian and Iranian Studies, and a translation of the novella The Book of Flowers by the Soviet Armenian writer Derenik Demirchian. Read More He has written many articles for a number of publications and is a regular contributor to The Harvard Crimson, Columbia’s The Current, and the New York Book Review.