Seminar Series | Prof. Lyndsey Stonebridge "Writing and Righting: Literature in the Endtimes (?) of Human Rights"

Iontas Sky
Thursday, October 15, 2020 - 17:00 to 18:30
Online

'Writing and Righting: Literature in the Endtimes (?) of Human Rights': a research seminar delivered by Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge

About this Event

This talk is part of the English Research Seminar Series at Maynooth University, in conjunction with CRISIS (Critical Research Into States, Ecologies, and Societies).

About the talk:

There was a time, not too long ago, when it did not seem necessary to describe the relationship between literature and human rights. The connections between the self-evident humanity of books and the bigger project of securing humanity seemed obvious. In many ways, they still are. We read books because they give us blueprints for the ways in which it might be possible to live with others in the world. We write declarations and protocols, endow international courts with power, train legislators and advocates because we also believe it is possible to create legal fictions strong enough to make living with others morally tolerable, if not just.

If these assumptions have changed, this is because not much about either human rights or the humanizing benefits of a literary education seems self-evident right now.

Drawing from her new book, Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights, in this talk Lyndsey Stonebridge argues that we need to re-think the relationship between literature and human rights for an age where the value of both is under question.

This talk will take place over MS Teams and can be booked here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/prof-lyndsey-stonebridge-literature-in-the-endtimes-of-human-rights-tickets-124289913477. Registered attendees will receive an email with the secure link the day before the event. Attendees are advised to download the free Teams app for optimum functionality.

Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge is Interdisciplinary Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Human Rights at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of most recently of The Judicial Imagination: Writing after Nuremberg (2011), winner of the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, 2014, and Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees (2018), winner of the Modernist Studies Association Best Book Prize 2018, and a recent collection of essays, Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights (2020) which will be published in November this year. Other publications include: The Destructive Element (1998), Reading Melanie Klein (1998) and The Writing of Anxiety (2007).

She is currently writing a critical-creative account of the relevance Arendt’s thinking for today, Thinking Like Hannah Arendt, which will be published by Jonathan Cape in 2022, and working on two collaborative Global Challenges projects, Refugee Hosts, and the Rights4Time Global network.

She is a regular media commentator and broadcaster, and writes for The New Statesman, as well as Prospect Magazine, Psyche, and New Humanist. She tweets on literature, human rights, Arendt, and contemporary politics @lyndseystonebri