Monday, October 10, 2011
Coffman Theater, Coffman Memorial Union
Conference 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Esther Freier Lecture by Philip Gourevitch 7:30 p.m.
"My Letter to the World: Narrating Human Rights" will be held on Monday, October 10, 2011, at the University of Minnesota to bring together a diverse group of writers, scholars, journalists, field workers, psychologists and others concerned with telling the stories of human rights abuses, genocide and atrocity across a historical and contemporary range of cultures and circumstances. In broad terms, the conference links literary work (specifically, memoir and the first person voice) with human rights testimony, scholarship and field work.
Co-hosted by the Human Rights Program, and the Creative Writing Program of the University of Minnesota.
"Salvage: Writing About Aftermaths from Rwanda to Abu Ghraib and Beyond"
Philip Gourevitch's harrowing nonfiction account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, won the 1998 National Book Critics' Circle Award. The long-time staff writer for The New Yorker has also published The Ballad of Abu Ghraib (2008) and A Cold Case (2001). Gourevitch edited The Paris Review from 2005 to 2010.
Free & open to the public. Sponsored by the Esther Freier Endowed Lectures in Literature and the one-day conference "My Letter to the World: Narrating Human Rights."
Sponsored by the Human rights Program and the Department of English
Co-sponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
For more information and the complete schedule please click here.
