Is the Armenian Genocide a strictly historical matter? If that is the case, why is it still a topical issue, capable of causing diplomatic rows and heated debates? The short answer would be that the century old Armenian Genocide is much more than a historical question. It emerged as a political dilemma on the international arena at the San Stefano peace conference in 1878 and has remained as such into our days. The disparity between knowledge and acknowledgement, mainly ascribable to Turkey’s official denial of the genocide, has only heightened the politicization of the Armenian question. Thus, the memories of the WWI era refuse to be relegated to the pages of history but are rather perceived as a vivid presence. This is the result of the perpetual process of politics of memory. The politics of memory is an intricate and interdisciplinary negotiation, engaging many different actors in the society who have access to a wide range of resources and measures in order to achieve their goals. By following the Armenian question during the past century up to its Centennial Commemoration in 2015, this study aims to explain why and how the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide has kept it as a topical issue in our days.

Why are some genocides prominently remembered while others are ignored, hidden, or denied? Consider the Turkish campaign denying the Armenian genocide, followed by the Armenian movement to recognize the violence. Similar movements are building to acknowledge other genocides that have long remained out of sight in the media, such as those against the Circassians, Greeks, Assyrians, the indigenous peoples in the Americas and Australia, and the violence that was the precursor to and the aftermath of the Holocaust. The contributors to this collection look at these cases and others from a variety of perspectives. These essays cover the extent to which our biases, our ways of knowing, our patterns of definition, our assumptions about truth, and our processes of remembering and forgetting as well as the characteristics of generational transmission, the structures of power and state ideology, and diaspora have played a role in hiding some events and not others. Noteworthy among the collection’s coverage is whether the trade in African slaves was a form of genocide and a discussion not only of Hutus brutalizing Tutsi victims in Rwanda, but of the execution of moderate Hutus as well. Hidden Genocides is a significant contribution in terms of both descriptive narratives and interpretations to the emerging subfield of critical genocide studies. Contributors: Daniel Feierstein, Donna-Lee Frieze, Krista Hegburg, Alexander Laban Hinton, Adam Jones, A. Dirk Moses, Chris M. Nunpa, Walter Richmond, Hannibal Travis, and Elisa von Joeden-Forgey

Dadrian, a former professor at SUNY, Geneseo, currently directs a genocide study project supported by the Guggenheim Foundation. The present study analyzes the devastating wartime destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire as the cataclysmic culmination of a historical process involving the progressive Turkish decimation of the Armenians through intermittent and incremental massacres. In addition to the excellent general bibliography there is an annotated bibliography of selected books used in the study. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

During and after World War I, over one million Ottoman Greeks were expelled from Turkey, a watershed moment in Greek history that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. And while few dispute the expulsion’s tragic scope, it remains the subject of fierce controversy, as activists have fought for international recognition of an atrocity they consider comparable to the Armenian genocide. This book provides a much-needed analysis of the Greek genocide as cultural trauma. Neither taking the genocide narrative for granted nor dismissing it outright, Erik Sjöberg instead recounts how it emerged as a meaningful but contested collective memory with both nationalist and cosmopolitan dimensions.

This book investigates the historical evolution of 'humanitarian photography' - the mobilization of photography in the service of humanitarian initiatives across state boundaries.

This book explores the genealogy of the concept of 'Medz Yeghern' ('Great Crime'), the Armenian term for the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the Armenian ethno-religious group in the Ottoman Empire between the years 1915-1923. Widely accepted by historians as one of the classical cases of genocide in the 20th century, ascribing the right definition to the crime has been a source of contention and controversy in international politics. Vartan Matiossian here draws upon extensive research based on Armenian sources, neglected in much of the current historiography, as well as other European languages in order to trace the development of the concepts pertaining to mass killing and genocide of Armenians from the ancient to the modern periods. Beginning with an analysis of the term itself, he shows how the politics of its use evolved as Armenians struggled for international recognition of the crime after 1945, in the face of Turkish protest. Taking a combined historical, philological, literary and political perspective, the book is an insightful exploration of the politics of naming a catastrophic historical event, and the competitive nature of national collective memories.

During the first World War, over a million Armenians were killed as Ottoman Turks embarked on a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing. Scholars have long described these massacres as genocide, one of Hitler’s prime inspirations for the Holocaust, yet the United States did not officially recognize the Armenian Genocide until 2021. This is the first book to examine how and why the United States refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide until the early 2020s. Although the American government expressed sympathy towards the plight of the Armenians in the 1910s and 1920s, historian Julien Zarifian explores how, from the 1960s, a set of geopolitical and institutional factors soon led the United States to adopt a policy of genocide non-recognition which it would cling to for over fifty years, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. He describes the forces on each side of this issue: activists from the US Armenian diaspora and their allies, challenging Cold War statesmen worried about alienating NATO ally Turkey and dealing with a widespread American reluctance to directly confront the horrors of the past. Drawing from congressional records, rare newspapers, and interviews with lobbyists and decision-makers, he reveals how genocide recognition became such a complex, politically sensitive issue.