Peter Balakian, Ph.D., will give the Holocaust Lecture for the Assembly Series at 4 p.m. Nov. 4 in Graham Chapel. His talk is titled “The Armenian Genocide and America’s First International Human Rights Movement.”
Balakian is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities and professor of English at Colgate University, and a human-rights activist who has been involved in the national and international movement for Armenian genocide recognition.
In his 2004 book, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, he describes the systematic deportation and murder of as many as 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during World War I. The book was a New York Times Notable Book and a New York Times best seller.
The Burning Tigris followed a 1997 memoir, Black Dog of Fate, which won the 1998 PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for the Art of the Memoir and appeared on the “best books of the year lists” for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Publisher’s Weekly.
In addition, Balakian has written a book of poetry, June-tree: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2000, published in 2001, and a book on the American poet Theodore Roethke. He has also co-translated Armenian poet Siamanto’s Bloody News From My Friend. Between 1976-1996, he and Bruce Smith edited the poetry journal Graham House Review.
Most notable among Balakian’s many awards, prizes and civic citations are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Ahanhit Literary Prize.
He earned an undergraduate degree from Bucknell University and a doctorate from Brown University.
Assembly Series lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, go online to assemblyseries.wustl.edu or call 935-4620.