Researchers
Helen Stacy - Senior Fellow at FSI

After an initial faculty seminar in August last year, we conducted our first public event on November 30 with Hope Deferred, a new volume edited by Peter Orner and Annie Holmes that collects the narratives of Zimbabweans who have suffered severe human rights abuses (video highlights of Peter and Annie reading excerpts and a brief summary of the event can be found here). This event emphasized the connections between oral history, human rights and political culture.

Based on the feedback we received at the initial August meeting and our enquiries, we have identified 3 areas of potential research that reflect the interests of Stanford humanities scholars, and which also have potential to put humanities faculty into dialogue with faculty in the social sciences and professional schools around issues of human rights.  The 3 areas are:

• Ethics and Contemporary Human Rights Dilemmas
• Empathy, Aesthetics and Human Action
• Science, Health and the Environment

This winter quarter we will set up collaborative, interdisciplinary working groups over the next 3 quarters (ie, Spring, Summer and Fall).  Activities such as workshops and conferences will produce written work about human rights that engages the humanities in human rights policy issues.

The ultimate goals of these working groups will be (1) enrich the research that humanities and non-humanities faculty are already conducting or are contemplating conducting through interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration, and (2) generate the seeds for an interdisciplinary human rights research agenda in the specified topic area that could conceivably take shape after Human Well-Being and Human Rights concludes. These outcomes will be synopsized by the working groups in a format equally accessible to all disciplinary partners. The Program on Human Rights will assist working groups in disseminating and e-publishing Human Well-Being and Human Rights working papers. 

Contact
Helen Stacy

Funding provided by
• Humanities Center