As a medium that conveys our acute sensitivities, longings, and struggles for justice, literature has always been responsive to human rights, namely, our political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental entitlements as rights-bearing subjects. The idea of human rights is simultaneously a political aim, a legal discourse, and a set of social, political, and legal practices. It figures in literary texts in the more recognizable form of access to justice. Writers and poets have always critically responded to injustices and violations of rights in their time and offered their reflections on the idea of justice and rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations defines five ethical principles in relation with human rights: 1. Universality, 2. Equality, 3. Participation, 4. Interdependence, 5. The rule of law. Although show slight varieties in different political structures and cultural contexts, these principles have a common resonance in literatures of the globe, especially in the literary representations of marginalized populations and the peripheric social groups whose lives are threatened by suppressive political powers.
This conference invites studies that interrogate the complexities of representing human rights vis-a-vis hegemonic political and economic powers in literature. The contributors are encouraged to draw on the most current political theories as well as trauma studies, postcolonial theory, subaltern studies, Marxism, feminist politics, and eco-critical studies. The significance of contributions come from the way they elucidate textual imaginations of human rights and the role of literary texts in imagining human rights as well as the way they navigate a range of fields while exploring the complexities of the relationship between literature and human rights.
Conference Organizing Committee:
Prof. Dr. Fermâ Lekesizalın (Chair) — İstanbul Topkapı University
Asst. Prof. Dr. Elvan Karaman Mez — İstanbul Topkapı University
Res. Asst. Furkan Tozan — İstanbul Topkapı University
Res. Asst. Seray Dizard IV — İstanbul Topkapı University
Conference Scientific Committee:
Prof. Dr. James Dawes — Macalester College
Prof. Dr. Ferial Ghazoul — The American University in Cairo
Prof. Dr. Rajeev Shridhar Patke — Yale-NUS College
Prof. Dr. Amra Raza — Punjab University
Prof. Dr. Emily J. Hogg — University of Southern Denmark
Dr. Elena V. Shabliy — Harvard University
Prof. Dr. Fermâ Lekesizalın — İstanbul Topkapı University
Plenary Speakers:
Prof. Dr. James Dawes — Macalester College
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pema Eden SAMDUP — Indira Gandhi National Open University
