VARTAN GREGORIAN, STEPHEN FEINSTEIN, AND PETER BALAKIAN TO BE
FEATURED AT BANQUET HONORING GENOCIDE SCHOLAR VAHAKN DADRIAN
NEW YORK, March 10 (Noyan Tapan). Carnegie Corporation president
Vartan Gregorian and Holocaust specialist Stephen Feinstein will
be the keynote speakers, and author Peter Balakian will be Master
of Ceremonies, at the upcoming “Lifetime Achievement Award” banquet
honoring Dr. Vahakn N Dadrian, the eminent scholar of the Armenian
Genocide, the Press Office of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian
Church of America reported. The Eastern Diocese of the Armenian
Church of America will bestow a special Lifetime Achievement Award
on Dr. Dadrian during a gala banquet on Saturday, April 2. His
Eminence Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, the Diocesan Primate, will
preside over the event and present the award to Dr. Dadrian. In
addition, the banquet guests will view a multi-media presentation
on Dr. Dadrian’s life and work, by the Zoryan Institute. Dr. Vahakn
N. Dadrian is recognized as the world’s foremost authority on the
Armenian Genocide. Over the past 35 years, he has laid the scholarly
groundwork for the study of the Genocide, and with his mastery of five
languages and his ability to integrate the disciplines of history,
law, and sociology, Dr. Dadrian is uniquely qualified for the work
of piecing together related facts from scattered sources. In addition
to his success in placing the Armenian Genocide in the mainstream of
international scholarship, Dr. Dadrian is one of the pioneers in the
field of comparative genocide research. His multi-level methodological
framework for the field of comparative genocide studies is considered
a major contribution to an ultimate “theory of genocide.” Vartan
Gregorian is the 12th president of Carnegie Corporation of New
York. Prior to his current position, which he assumed in June 1997,
Dr. Gregorian served for nine years as the 16th president of Brown
University. Gregorian has taught European and Middle Eastern history
at San Francisco State College, the University of California at
Los Angeles, and the University of Texas at Austin. In 1972, he
joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty and was appointed the
Tarzian Professor of History and professor of South Asian history.
He was founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1974, and four years later became
its 23rd provost, serving until 1981. For eight years (1981-1989),
Gregorian was president of the New York Public Library. In 1989
he was appointed president of Brown University. Gregorian is the
author of The Road to Home: My Life And Times; Islam: A Mosaic, Not
A Monolith; and The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, 1880-1946. He
has been decorated by the French, Italian, Austrian, and Portuguese
governments. His numerous civic and academic honors include some
56 honorary degrees. In 1998, President Clinton awarded him the
National Humanities Medal. In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded
him the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civil award. Stephen
C. Feinstein is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of
Wisconsin-River Falls, where he has taught history and art history
since l969. He has taught courses on Russian art and architecture and
lectures on Western European art. Dr. Feinstein has been a frequent
lecturer at universities in the U.S. and Europe on artistic responses
to the Holocaust and problems of representation. Since September 1997,
Dr. Feinstein has served as director for the Center for Holocaust
and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, whose purpose
is to provide a resource for teaching about the Holocaust and other
forms of genocide. Since the establishment of CHGS, issues surrounding
the history and memory of the Armenian Genocide have been a central
part of both the program and the center’s website. Peter Balakian
teaches at Colgate University, where he is a Donald M. and Constance
H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities; he specializes in American
poetry, poetry writing, American literature, modern Irish poetry,
and genocide studies. His dramatic 1997 memoir, Black Dog of Fate,
told the story of his awakening to the Armenian Genocide, and its
unspoken effects on his own family. The book proved to be a milestone
in the popular recognition of the Genocide, and has gained worldwide
notice through its numerous translated editions. It was listed among
the New York Times and Los Angeles Times “Notable Books,” and won the
PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for memoirs. In Dr. Balakian’s recent book,
The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response
(2003), he returns to the theme of the tragedy of 1915 – this time
from the perspective of contemporary humanitarian responses to the
widely reported annihilation of Turkey’s Armenian population. The book
spent a number of weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and
was a “Notable Book” for both the Times and Publishers Weekly. Beyond
his roles as scholar, memoirist, and advocate, Dr. Balakian’s first
vocation is as a poet; collections of his arresting poems include:
June-tree: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2000 (2001), Dyer’s Thistle
(1996), a translation of Siamanto’s Bloody News From My Friend (1996),
Reply From Wilderness Island (1988), Sad Days of Light (1983), and
Father Fisheye (1979). He has contributed his poetry and essays to
The Nation, Art in America, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review,
Partisan Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Poetry, among other
periodicals. He is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim
Fellowship.