International Conference
History Embodied: Biography and Armenian American Studies

October 22-23, 2026, at the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), Belmont, MA

Organizers: Nora Lessersohn (USC) and Julien Zarifian (University of Poitiers)

In recent years, scholarship on Armenian communities in the United States has expanded significantly, deepening our understanding of their history and experience. Much of this work has focused on major events that shaped these immigrant communities; their political, religious, or cultural characteristics; questions of assimilation; and the evolving practices of their members.

By contrast, biography has been less frequently employed as a methodological lens for studying Armenian Americans. While not absent from the field, biographical studies have often remained marginal and have not always sought to illuminate Armenian American history in a systematic way. Unlike memoirs—which make their own important contributions—biographies allow for a more analytical engagement with individual lives. Though they have their own limits, biographies can situate subjects within broader contexts, enabling conclusions that move beyond the individual to reveal larger historical processes.

This conference seeks to explore what the biographical genre can bring to Armenian American history and historiography. Understood as a rigorous mode of academic inquiry, biography is also envisaged here in its diversity in terms of approach and methodology, and is intended to include individual as well as prosopographic, or group, examinations.

We invite papers on both well-known and lesser-known Armenian American figures, asking what new perspectives biography can offer and what it reveals about the Armenian experience in the United States. Anchored in the principle that writing the history of an Armenian individual necessarily entails placing their life within multi-scalar and interconnected contexts, the conference aims to highlight innovative approaches to the study of Armenian Americans.

We welcome proposals on any individual, deceased or living, of Armenian background connected to the United States, regardless of period, region, or social class. Papers may address figures who lived in the United States, or those who, while based elsewhere, engaged extensively with the country and its institutions—that is, those who in some way participated in “the American experience.” Owing to the severe dearth of biographical studies of Armenian American women, we particularly encourage papers on such figures.

Selected contributions from the conference will be considered for inclusion in an edited volume.

Interested participants should submit an abstract of no more than 400 words and a short bio by December 31, 2025 to the conference organizers, Nora Lessersohn (lesserso@usc.edu) and Julien Zarifian (julien.zarifian@univ-poitiers.fr). Decisions will be announced by January 31, 2026.

Co-Sponsored by the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), the University of Poitiers, the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS), the Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies at Harvard University, the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies.

Photo Caption: An Armenian American couple with the Statue of Liberty c. 1928. (Project SAVE Photograph Archive, Courtesy of Tina Hazarian).