New Faculty Publication: Modes of Human Rights Literature: Towards a Culture Without Borders
Prof. Michael Galchinsky of the English Department has recently published Modes of Human Rights Literature: Toward a Culture Without Borders (2016).
This sophisticated book argues that human rights literature both helps the persecuted to cope with their trauma and serves as the foundation for a cosmopolitan ethos of universal civility — a culture without borders. Michael Galchinsky maintains that, no matter how many treaties there are, a rights-respecting world will not truly exist until people everywhere can imagine it. The Modes of Human Rights Literature describes four major forms of human rights literature: protest, testimony, lament, and laughter to reveal how such works give common symbolic forms to widely held sociopolitical emotions. — back cover.
Prof. Galchinsky’s research focuses on Human Rights Literature and Law, 19th century British literature, and Jewish studies. His other publications include the following books:
- Jews and Human Rights: Dancing at Three Weddings (2008)
- Grace Aguilar: Selected Writings, ed. (2003)
- Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, ed. with David Biale and Susannah Heschel (1998)
- The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England (1996)
and these selected articles:
- “Lament as Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Review 15, no. 3 (Sept. 2014): 259-281.
- “Quaint and Obsolete: The ‘War on Terror’ and the Right to Legal Personality,” International Studies Perspectives 14, no. 3 (Aug. 2013): 255-268.
- “The Problem with Human Rights Culture,” South Atlantic Review 75, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 5-18.
- “The American Jewish Committee and the Birth of the Israeli Human Rights Movement,” Journal of Human Rights 5, no. 3 (July-Sept. 2006): 303-321.
- “The Jewish Settlements in the West Bank: International Law and Israeli Jurisprudence,” Israel Studies 9, no. 3 (2004): 115-136.