Santesso, Esra
MWF 11:30 AM
Park Hall 0250
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?