Simon Payaslian

Simon Payaslian is the Holder of the Charles K. and Elizabeth M. Kenosian Chair in Modern Armenian History and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of a number of books, articles, and book chapters, including The Political Economy of Human Rights in Armenia: Authoritarianism and Democracy in a Former Soviet Republic (I.B. Tauris, 2011); United States Policy toward the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); and “Imagining Armenia,” in The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and Present, edited by Allon Gal, Athena S. Leoussi, and Anthony D. Smith (Brill, 2010). He is currently completing a book tentatively titled Diasporization and the Politics of Recognition.

Courses in Holocaust and Genocide Studies:

• History of International Human Rights (HI 346 / IR 348 / HI 746)
• History of Genocide (HI 384)
• The Armenian Genocide (HI 380 / HI 780)
• Prevention of Genocide (HI 543 / IR 437)

In Fall 2025, Prof. Payaslian offered History of Genocide, which covers a number of genocide cases in the twentieth century, including the Hereros in West Africa/Namibia, the Armenian genocide, the Jewish Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, and the Rwandan genocide. In Spring 2026, he taught Nationalism in the 19th and 20th Centuries, which explores the history of nationalism in different parts of the world, including the causes and consequences of Fascism and Nazism in Europe.

His paper Armenian Nationalist Pathologization of Diasporic Existence and Thanatological Discourses” has been accepted for publication in Études arméniennes contemporaines. “Daniel Varoujan’s Philosophy of Home: The Ghent Poems” is currently under review for the Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis.

Prof. Payaslian conducted research at the National Archives and the Library of Congress Manuscript Division in Washington, DC, for his current project on the history of the Armenian community in the United States.