Peter Balakian

Peter Balakian (born June 13, 1951) is an Armenian American poet, writer and academic, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of Humanities at Colgate University.

Life

Balakian was born in 1951, in Teaneck, New Jersey to an Armenian family and was raised in Teaneck and Tenafly, New Jersey. After attending the Tenafly Public Schools, he graduated from Englewood School for Boys (which since merged with other area schools and is now known as Dwight-Englewood School). He earned a B.A. from Bucknell University, and M.A. from New York University, and a Ph.D., in American Civilization, from Brown University. He has taught at Colgate University since 1980. He is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English and director of Colgate's creative writing program. He was the first director of Colgate’s Center for Ethics and World Societies.

Career

Balakian is the author of five books of poems, including, most recently, June-tree: New and Selected Poems 1974-2000. His other books are Father Fisheye (1979), Sad Days of Light (1983), Reply From Wilderness Island (1988), Dyer’s Thistle (1996), and several fine limited editions. His poems have appeared widely in American magazines and journals such as The Nation, The New Republic, Antaeus, Partisan Review, Poetry, AGNI, and The Kenyon Review; and in anthologies such as New Directions in Prose and Poetry, The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets, Poetry’s 75th Anniversary Issue (1987), The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry and others.

Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց ցեղասպանություն Hayots tseghaspanutyun), also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, traditionally by Armenians, as Medz Yeghern (Armenian: Մեծ Եղեռն, "Great Crime"), was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects inside their historic homeland, which lies within the present-day Republic of Turkey. The number of victims is estimated at between 800,000 and 1.5 million. The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders from Constantinople to Ankara, the majority of whom were eventually murdered.

The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre. Other indigenous and Christian ethnic groups such as the Assyrians and the Ottoman Greeks were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government, and their treatment is considered by some historians to be part of the same genocidal policy. Most Armenian diaspora communities around the world came into being as a direct result of the genocide.

Armenian

Armenian refers to something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia:

See also

Peter

Peter often is used to refer to Saint Peter, a disciple of Jesus Christ. It can also refer to many other people, of which only a few are listed here. This page only lists people commonly referred to as "Peter" and nothing else; for others, please see List of people named Peter.

People

Given name

Religion

Other people

Surname

Other uses

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide can refer to: