Santesso, Esra
TR 9:35 AM
Park Hall 0251
Many scholars argue that there is an inherent correlation between legal rights and literary forms: storytelling is an act of bearing witness to injustices, giving voice to the oppressed and the underprivileged, and raising ethical questions about the quality of human existence. Indeed, some scholars argue that a globally recognized declaration of rights would not have been possible if it were not for literary narratives that dealt with issues such as right to life, right to property, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law. With this in mind, this course investigates the ways in which literary studies have contributed to the understanding of human rights and their implementation by nation-states. We will consider what it means to be a “human”, who qualifies as a right-bearing individual, and what rights and responsibilities each person holds. An important goal of this course is to approach the idea of human rights not, as is often the case, simply as a “universal” ideal, but as a framework to interrogate the relationship between various cultures and traditions.
We will be looking at a variety of genres (novels, essays, newspaper articles, and manifestos) in order to discuss how literary authors allude to human rights and address human rights violations as a form of witnessing with the intend to amend official accounts of history. In our reading of these texts, we will focus on the ways in which they both support and problematize international efforts—describing the United Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as “urgent and necessary” as well as “incomplete and inadequate.” Ultimately, our analysis of the texts will consider questions about aesthetics and ethics simultaneously: what responsibilities do these authors have towards their subject-matter/audience as they engage with storytelling? How do these stories relate to cultural and aesthetic forms? In what way do they resolve the tensions between the local and global structures?