Congo Cases: The Stories of Human Rights History

Discussion workshop with Professor Eleni Coundouriotis (Connecticut)  for staff and PG researchers:

5.00pm – 6.30pm Tuesday 11th December 2012, Manchester Metropolitan University

Institute of Humanities and Social Science Research

Geoffrey Manton Building, Oxford Road, Manchester

“Congo Cases: The Stories of Human Rights History” 

 The essay to be discussed attempts to define a genre called “human rights history” by examining the persistent repetition of the “heart of darkness” narrative as a story of the encounter of the west with Africa. The essay delineates a typology of three kinds of narrative (the moral crusade, the redeemer witness, and the democratizing movement) as paradigmatic of human rights re-emplotments of already known historical circumstances. By identifying a dynamic of revelation and concealment, the essay provokes a debate about the claims of human rights history and its political underpinnings.

Eleni Coundouriotis is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut and Faculty Affiliate of the Human Rights Institute.

http://humanrights.uconn.edu/

Eleni’s research interests are in postcolonial literature, nineteenth-century comparative prose studies, cultural studies and human rights. Her publications include Claiming History: Colonialism, Ethnography, and the Novel (1999) and the forthcoming The People’s Right to the Novel: War Fiction in the Postcolony.

Prof. Coundouriotis will be offering an early evening workshop, for which staff and PG researchers can sign up on a first-come, first-served basis.

The workshop will introduce her own work and address the work of the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut.

Please email h.darby@mmu.ac.uk  ASAP to book a place and receive a copy of the reading and the location details.

Prof. Coundouriotis is also presenting a public lecture on the preceding evening, Monday 10th December on  "Naturalism, Humanitarianism and the Fiction of War"  Details for this are on Eventbrite here: http://elenicoundouriotis-arp-eorg.eventbrite.com/