Written in the context of critical dialogues about the war on terror and the global crisis in human rights violations, authors of this collected volume discuss aspects of terror with regard to human rights events across the globe, but especially in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Their discussion and reflection demonstrate that the need to question continuously and to engage in permanent critique does not contradict the need to seek answers, to advocate social change, and to intervene critically. With contributions by scholars, activists, and artists, the articles collected here offer strategies for intervening critically in debates about the connections between terror and human rights as they are taking place across contemporary society. The work presented in the volume is intended for scholars, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of the humanities and social sciences, including political science, sociology, history, literary study, cultural studies, and cultural anthropology.
Introduction to Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror, by Sophia A. McClennen and Henry James Morello
Part One: Human Rights
Democracy's Promise and the Politics of Worldliness in the Age of Terror, by Henry A. Giroux
The Humanities, Human Rights, and the Comparative Imagination, by Sophia A. McClennen
The Logic and Language of Torture, by Jonathan H. Marks
Narration in International Human Rights Law, by Joseph R. Slaughter
On Linguistic Human Rights and the United States "Foreign" Language Crisis,by Domna Stanton
The Black Body and Representations of the (In)human, by Li-Chun Hsiao
Part Two: Media
The Terrorist Event, by Bill Nichols
Reading South African Media Representations of Islam after 11 September 2001, by Gabeba Baderoon
Collateral Damage and the "Incident" at Haditha, by Tom Engelhardt
The Tortured Body, the Photograph, and the US War on Terror, by Julie Gerk Hernandez
Mass-Mediated Social Terror in Spain, by Nicholas Manganas
Media in a Capitalist Culture, by Barbara Trent
Part Three: Analysis
Textual Strategies to Resist Disappearance and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, by Alicia Partnoy
The Global Phenomenon of "Humanizing" Terrorism in Literature and Cinema, by Elaine Martin
Landmines, HIV/AIDS, and Africa's New Generation, by Barbara Harlow
Dorfman, Schubert, and Death and the Maiden, by David Schroeder
Bearing Witness through Fiction, by Carolina Rocha
Part Four: Artists
Globalizing Compassion, Photography, and the Challenge of Terror, by Ariel Dorfman
A Monk's Tale, by Sam Hamill
Poetry and the Aesthetic of Morality, by Michael McIrvin
Artists in Times of War, by Howard Zinn
Part Five: Bibliography
Selected Bibliography of Comparative Studies on Human Rights Culture, by Henry James Morello
Contributors' Profiles
Index
Sophia A. McClennen teaches comparative literature, Spanish, and women's studies at Penn State University. She is the author of, among many other articles and books, The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language and Space in Hispanic Literatures (Purdue UP, 2004) and Ariel Dorfman: An Aesthetics of Hope (Duke UP, 2009). Her PhD in Spanish and Latin American literature is from Duke University.
Henry James Morello teaches comparative literature, Spanish, and film at Penn State University. His research interests include theatre and film from Latin America and Spain, posttraumatic culture, and comparative cultural studies. He has published on the uses of the Internet by the Zapatistas in Chiapas. His PhD in Hispanic studies is from the University of Illinois.
