ENGL 4561: Literature and Human Rights
Subject Liaison
Reference Source
- The Practical Guide to Humanitarian LawThe Practical Guide to Humanitarian Law provides the precise meaning and content for over 200 terms such as terrorism, refugee, genocide, armed conflict, protection, peacekeeping, torture, and private military companies—words that the media has introduced into everyday conversation, yet whose legal and political meanings are often obscure. The Guide definitively explains the terms, concepts, and rules of humanitarian law in accessible and reader-friendly alphabetical entries.
- A Dictionary of Human RightsThis 2nd edition (2004) reference work reflects the growing international concern over human rights. It provides explanations of the terminology, issues, organizations and laws surrounding this emotive subject.
Example Streaming Videos in Virgo
- Bhopal: The Second Tragedy (1995, 52 min.)In 1984, the city of Bhopal in India was the site of one of the world's most devastating chemical disasters. Over the ten years since the gas leak from the Union Carbide factory, the death toll stands at 20,000 and more than 600,000 personal injury suits have been filed. Although the signs of the poisoning are still clearly visible on the streets and people are still dying in scores, the victims have received little compensation for their suffering. This program returns to the scene of the accident and uncovers a story of secrecy, corruption, mismanagement, and misinformation on the part of both Union Carbide and the Indian government. This thoughtful and moving program shows how much of the suffering in Bhopal could have been avoided.
- Humanitarian Intervention Does More Harm Than Good: A Debate (2018, 69 min.)The international community currently faces a global refugee crisis and mass atrocities in Iraq, Myanmar, Syria, Yemen, and other countries. How should the West respond? Proponents of humanitarian intervention argue that the world’s most powerful nations have a responsibility to protect innocent people around the planet. Beyond saving lives, they contend, intervention deters would-be abusers and ensures global stability, thereby strengthening peace, security, and order. But opponents argue that humanitarian intervention is a thinly veiled form of imperialism that imposes Western values on other nations and undermines state sovereignty and independence. It's also often ineffective, they add, and can increase death tolls and worsen the conflicts it sets out to resolve. Does humanitarian intervention do more harm than good?
- Human Rights in Haiti (2001, 57 min.)This film takes viewers through the history of the Haitian people and their struggle for their rights. A slave revolt in 1791 and a second war against colonial France led to Haiti becoming the first independent black republic in 1804. After suffering under tyrants for decades, most recently the infamous Duvalier (Papa Doc) and his son, the Haitians finally elected Jean Bertrand Aristide, a reformer. Haiti's troubles continued when the military overthrew Aristide, although he later returned. The film focuses on some of the victims of the more than 40,000 human rights violations that have taken place in this troubled country. Death and injuries occur after clashes between Aristide supporters and the military, between the "new" police, the old police, and criminals.
- Modern Slavery (2009, 45 min.)Today, slavery is illegal across the world, but its ongoing existance is stagering: there are currently more slaves in the world than at any given point in human history. Trafficking, child labour, sex slavery, debt slavery, and child soldiers are among the most common forms of modern slavery. This eye-opening expose introduces us to slaves from Uganda, India, Moldova, Cambodia and France. Why does slavery still exist and what will it take to finally get rid of it?
- Modern Slavery: Episode 2 (2009, 45 min)n Asia, we find the most widespread form of slavery: debt bondage. Child soldiers are being kidnapped by the liberation army LRA in Uganda.
- TEDTalks: Jonathan Marks—In Praise of Conflict (2017, 14 min.)Conflict is bad; compromise, consensus and collaboration are good—or so we're told. Lawyer and bioethicist Jonathan Marks challenges this conventional wisdom, showing how governments can jeopardize public health, human rights and the environment when they partner with industry. An important, timely reminder that common good and common ground are not the same thing.
Example Online Sources
- Human Rights, Max Roser, Our World in DataOur World in Data is a collaborative effort between researchers at the University of Oxford, who are the scientific editors of the website content; and the non-profit organization Global Change Data Lab, who publishes and maintains the website and the data tools that make the work possible. Our World in Data is about Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.
- Human Rights, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyThis entry addresses the concept of human rights, the existence and grounds of human rights, the question of which rights are human rights, and relativism about human rights.
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United NationsThe Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.
Helpful URLs
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Research Using Library Databases
This guide is intended to provide ideas on where to conduct recent research into literature and human rights. If you would like personalized research help, please email me your questions and/or set up a time to meet with me either in person or on Zoom. You can schedule an appointment with me on Zoom by clicking the button in my information box to the left, by selecting a day/time on my Make an Appointment page, or by contacting me directly at slb4kt@virginia.edu. If you would prefer to meet in person, please email me and we'll find a mutually agreeable time.
Need help right away? Please contact a librarian using one of our Ask a Librarian options.
Databases for Finding Articles about Literature & Human Rights
ProQuest One Literature contains 3 million literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and more than 500,000 primary works – including rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theatre performances, and author readings.
JSTOR includes older issues of scholarly journals, from the start to 3-5 years ago.
Project Muse provides full-text searching of recent articles from major scholarly journals, including roughly 120 journals about literature. Like JSTOR, Project Muse is not as comprehensive as the MLAIB, but offers the advantages of full-text searching and instant access to PDFs.
Databases for finding Articles and other Sources for Broader Context
Humanities International Complete indexes over 2000 journals as well as books and other publications. Topics covered include archaeology, art, dance, drama, ethnic and women's studies, history, literature, music, philosophy, poetry, religion.
Academic Search Complete is a large general database of articles from scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers on many topics. Also includes reference books, biographies, speeches, images, and other primary source documents.
Amnesty International Archives allows you to explore the growth of the human rights movement during the second half of the twentieth century through the International Secretariat records of Amnesty International. The material within this collection is vital for studying the history of key political events, global social change and the development of a global movement for human rights covering themes including state violence, political prisoners, minority rights and more.
Historical Abstracts indexes articles about the history of the world from 1450 to the present, published in over 2,000 journals from many countries. Includes book reviews. Does not include articles about the US or Canada. For these see America: History & Life.
Legal Collection is a large collection (over 250) of law journals plus some case studies and documents.
Peace Research Abstracts provide bibliographic records covering topics related to peace analysis including conflict resolution, international affairs and peace psychology.
The UN iLibrary is the first comprehensive global search, discovery, and viewing source for digital content created by the United Nations. It provides a single digital destination for seamlessly accessing publications, journals, data, and series published by the United Nations Secretariat, and its funds and programs. Every year around 500 new titles are planned to be added to United Nations iLibrary, approximately 70% of which are in English.
Filmmakers Library Online provides award-winning documentaries with relevance across the curriculum—race and gender studies, human rights, globalization and global studies, multiculturalism, international relations, criminal justice, the environment, bioethics, health, political science and current events, psychology, arts, literature, and more. It presents points of view and historical and current experiences from diverse cultures and traditions world-wide. This release now provides 1,507 titles. (Note - when you click on the link to get into the database you'll need to choose University of Virginia as your institution, then you should get access to the film library).
Women's Studies International allows you to find journal articles, books, conference proceedings, reports, theses & dissertations, documents and other materials on all aspects of women's studies.
Women and Social Movements International, 1840 to Present is a collection of primary materials. Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, this collection lets you see how women’s social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life.
Biography & Biocritical Databases
Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) traces the lives and careers of selected authors, critics, screenwriters, journalists, scholars, and publishers from all eras and genres, with lists of recommended books and articles. Search for the author you want and choose the Biographies tab. The DLB link above will take you to Gale Literature, a larger collection where you can also find criticism, reviews, and more.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) provides articles on the lives of British persons from the earliest times to the end of the 20th century. Note: We only have limited access so please close your browser when finished with this resource.
Dictionary of American Biography (DAB) includes long essays on almost 20,000 figures from US history. DAB is part of U.S. History in Context. Use the search box to find the entry for a particular person.
World Biographical Information System (WBIS) - WBIS Online is the most comprehensive biographical database available, providing biographical information on over 6 Million people from the 8th century B.C. to the present. Included are 8.5 Million digital facsimile articles from biographical reference works.
Finding items using Virgo
Virgo, the UVA Library’s primary search tool, contains catalog records for books, print journals, DVDs, maps, and digitized materials, as well as links to online articles from our rich array of subscription journals. You can search catalog materials and articles together, or view those results separately, using the facets provided to limit your results by author, format, publication period, and more. To find online content in the catalog, use Format limiters like EBook, Streaming Video, or Online to limit your catalog search results.
Example subject terms:
- Human Rights in Literature
- Human Rights - Language
- Humanitarianism in Literature
- Law and Literature
- Literature and Society
- Social Justice in Literature
Example Print and E-Books of Interest
Below are just a few of many examples of print books and ebooks available that discuss literature and human rights. Try searching for a particular novel or work, for an author, or use the subject term recommendations above to get started searching in Virgo for relevant materials.
The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights and Literature by Call Number: Ebook - Use link in Virgo record to access.ISBN: 9781108481328Publication Date: 2019Literature has been essential to shaping the notions of human personhood, good life, moral responsibility, and forms of freedom that have been central to human rights law, discourse, and politics. The literary study of human rights has also recently generated innovative and timely perspectives on the history, meaning, and scope of human rights. The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights and Literature introduces this new and exciting field of study in the humanities. It explores the historical and institutional contexts, theoretical concepts, genres, and methods that literature and human rights share. Equally accessible to beginners in the field and more advanced researches, this Companion emphasizes both the literary and interdisciplinary dimensions of human rights and the humanities.
Fictions of Dignity: Embodying Human Rights in World Literature by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 0801451361Publication Date: 2012Over the past fifty years, debates about human rights have assumed an increasingly prominent place in postcolonial literature and theory. Writers from Salman Rushdie to Nawal El Saadawi have used the novel to explore both the possibilities and challenges of enacting and protecting human rights, particularly in the Global South. In Fictions of Dignity, Elizabeth S. Anker shows how the dual enabling fictions of human dignity and bodily integrity contribute to an anxiety about the body that helps to explain many of the contemporary and historical failures of human rights, revealing why and how lives are excluded from human rights protections along the lines of race, gender, class, disability, and species membership. In the process, Anker examines the vital work performed by a particular kind of narrative imagination in fostering respect for human rights. Drawing on phenomenology, Anker suggests how an embodied politics of reading might restore a vital fleshiness to the overly abstract, decorporealized subject of liberal rights. Each of the novels Anker examines approaches human rights in terms of limits and paradoxes. Each of these literary case studies further demonstrates the relevance of embodiment to both comprehending and redressing the failures of human rights, even while those narratives refuse simplistic ideals or solutions.
Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World by Call Number: Ebook (also owned in print - check Virgo)ISBN: 9780674984806Publication Date: 2018The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. While state violations of political rights have garnered unprecedented attention in recent decades, a commitment to material equality has quietly disappeared. In its place, economic liberalization has emerged as the dominant force. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn considers how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of broader social and economic justice. Moyn places the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift and explores why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside exploding inequality.
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9780415736411Publication Date: 2015The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights provides a comprehensive, transnational, and interdisciplinary map to this emerging field, offering a broad overview of human rights and literature while providing innovative readings on key topics. The first of its kind, this volume covers essential issues and themes, necessarily crossing disciplines between the social sciences and humanities. Drawn from many different global contexts, the essays offer an ideal introduction for those approaching the study of literature and human rights for the first time, looking for new insights and interdisciplinary perspectives, or interested in new directions for future scholarship. Contributors include Chris Abani.
Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights by Call Number: Shannon PN56 .H79 S76 2021ISBN: 9780198814054Publication Date: 2021A bold and accessible argument for the moral and political value of literature in rightless times. The obvious humanity of books would seem to make literature and human rights natural allies. But what is the real connection between literature and human rights? In this short polemical book, Lyndsey Stonebridge shows how the history of human rights owes much to the creative imagining of writers. Yet, she argues, it is not enough to claim that literature is the empathetic wing of the human rights movement. At a time when human rights are so blatantly under attack, the writers we need how are the political truthtellers, the bold callers out of easy sympathy and comfortable platitudes.
Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and Literature by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 0415890977Publication Date: 2012What can literary theory reveal about discourses and practices of human rights, and how can human rights frameworks help to make sense of literature? How have human rights concerns shaped the literary marketplace, and how can literature impact human rights concerns? Essays in this volume theorize how both literature and reading literarily can shape understanding of human rights in productive ways. Contributors to Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and Literature provide a shared history of modern literature and rights; theorize how trauma, ethics, subjectivity, and witnessing shape representations of human rights violations and claims in literary texts across a range of genres (including poetry, the novel, graphic narrative, short story, testimonial, and religious fables); and consider a range of civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights and their representations. The authors reflect on the imperial and colonial histories of human rights as well as the cynical mobilization of human rights discourses in the name of war, violence, and repression; at the same time, they take seriously Gayatri Spivak's exhortation that human rights is something that we "cannot not want," exploring the central function of storytelling at the heart of all human rights claims, discourses, and policies. Includes essays on The Farming of Bones and Animal's People as well as discussion of Persepolis.
The Cambridge Handbook of New Human Rights by Call Number: Shannon JC571.C36 2020 (also avail as ebook - check Virgo)ISBN: 9781108484732Publication Date: 2020The book provides in-depth insight to scholars, practitioners, and activists dealing with human rights, their expansion, and the emergence of 'new' human rights. Whereas legal theory tends to neglect the development of concrete individual rights, monographs on 'new' rights often deal with structural matters only in passing and the issue of 'new' human rights has received only cursory attention in literature. By bringing together a large number of emergent human rights, analysed by renowned human rights experts from around the world, and combining the analyses with theoretical approaches, this book fills this lacuna. The comprehensive and dialectic approach, which enables insights from individual rights to overarching theory and vice versa, will ensure knowledge growth for generalists and specialists alike. The volume goes beyond a purely legal analysis by observing the contestation, rhetorics, the struggle for recognition of 'new' human rights, thus speaking to human rights professionals beyond the legal sphere.
The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood by Call Number: E-book: Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9780521548519Publication Date: 2006Margaret Atwood's international celebrity has given a new visibility to Canadian literature in English. This Companion provides a comprehensive critical account of Atwood's writing across the wide range of genres within which she has worked for the past forty years, while paying attention to her Canadian cultural context and the multiple dimensions of her celebrity. The main concern is with Atwood the writer, but there is also Atwood the media star and public performer, cultural critic, environmentalist and human rights spokeswoman, social and political satirist, and mythmaker. This immensely varied profile is addressed in a series of chapters which cover biographical, textual, and contextual issues. The Introduction contains an analysis of dominant trends in Atwood criticism since the 1970s, while the essays by twelve leading international Atwood critics represent the wide range of different perspectives in current Atwood scholarship.
Human Rights and Literature: Writing Rights by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in Virgo.ISBN: 9781137504319Publication Date: 2016Set at the intersection of Human Rights, social justice and Literature, this cutting edge book examines a range of literary texts, fiction, plays and poetry, and through them considers representations of Human Rights and their violations. Examining violated bodies and subjects, the settings and environments in which these are embedded and the witnessing of atrocities, it considers how the 'subject' (or 'person' of Human Rights) emerges within fiction or poetry. Structured so as to move outward from the individual body to the world, the study progresses from the preconditions or settings for Human Rights violations through to atrocity, from witnessing to the making of a specific kind of public around traumatic recall. It addresses representations of destroyed corporeality and subjectivity, the violations and dissolution of the subject and the construction of trauma-memory citizenship to the making of communities of mourning. Through a broad study of texts from different genres, this text reveals how Literature both documents the basic human aspirations of happiness, security and hope, but also the limitations and the violations of these aspirations. Includes discussion of Danticat's The Farming of Bones and Coetzee's Disgrace, along with many other works.
Ecofeminism and the Indian Novel by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 0367198339Publication Date: 2019Ecofeminism and the Indian Novel tests the theories of ecofeminism against the background of India's often different perceptions of environmental problems, challenging the hegemony of Western culture in thinking about human problems. This book moves beyond a simple application of the concepts of ecofeminism, instead explaining the uniqueness of Indian novels as narratives of ecofeminism and how they can contribute to the development of the theory of ecofeminism. In examining a selection of novels, the author argues that Indian texts conceptualize the ecological crisis more as a human problem than as a gender problem. The book proposes that we should think of ecofeminism as ecohumanism instead, seeing human beings and nature as a part of a complex web. Novels analysed within the text include Indra Sinha's Animal's People. Ecofeminism and the Indian Novel will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecofeminism, ecocriticism, ecological feminism, environmental humanities, gender studies, ecological humanities, feminist studies and Indian literature.
Narrating Violence in the Postcolonial World by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9781000433210Publication Date: 2021This book examines representations of violence across the postcolonial world-from the Americas to Australia-in novels, short stories, plays, and films. The chapters move from what appear to be interpersonal instances of violence to communal conflicts such as civil war, showing how these acts of violence are specifically rooted in colonial forms of abuse and oppression but constantly move and morph. Taking its cue from theories in such fields as postcolonial, violence, gender, and trauma studies, the book thus shows that violence is slippery in form, but also fluid in nature, so that one must trace its movement across time and space to understand even a single instance of it. When analysing such forms and trajectories of violence in postcolonial creative writing and films, the contributors critically examine the ethical issues involved in narrating abuse, depicting violated bodies, and presenting romanticized resolutions that may conceal other forms of violence. Includes essay "Violence, trauma, and the question of redemption in postcolonial Zimbabwe: Petina Gappah's The Book of Memory"
Postcolonial Translocations: Cultural Representation and Critical Spatial Thinking by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in Virgo.ISBN: 9042036311Publication Date: 2013The 'spatial turn' has affected an increasing number of disciplines and research fields. This essay collection explores the ways in which critical spatial thinking can be made productive for postcolonial studies. Testing the uses and limitations of 'translocation' as an open exploratory model for a critically spatialized postcolonial studies, this book covers a wide range of cultural expressions from the anglophone world and beyond - literature, film and TV, photography and other forms of visual art, philosophy, historical memory, and tourism. Addressing all those interested in the complex spatial representations of our globalized world, the book is aimed in particular at students and scholars of postcolonial literary and cultural studies. Includes essay, " 'We die once only, and for such a long time': Approaching trauma through translocation in Chris Abani's Song for Night" by Daria Tunca.
Representation and Memory in Graphic Novels by Call Number: EBook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9781472481566Publication Date: 2019This book analyses the relationship between comics and cultural memory. By focusing on a range of landmark comics from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the discussion draws attention to the ongoing role of visual culture in framing testimony, particularly in relation to underprivileged subjects such as migrants and refugees, individuals dealing with war and oppressive regimes and individuals living with particular health conditions. The discussion is influenced by literary and cultural debates on the intersections between ethics, testimony, trauma, and human rights, reflected in its three overarching questions: 'How do comics usually complicate the production of cultural memory in local contents and global mediascapes?', 'How do comics engage with, and generate, new forms of testimonial address?', and 'How do the comics function as mnemonic structures?' The author highlights that the power of comics is that they allow both creators and readers to visualise the fracturing power of violence and oppression - at the level of the individual, domestic, communal, national and international- in powerful and creative ways. Includes chapter, "Narrating trauma in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis."
