Literature and Human Rights

The course aims to offer students a basic yet coherent understanding of the principles and main regulations concerning human rights, their history, and the issues related to their protection and promotion. At the same time, the course seeks to provide knowledge of the historical experience of human rights and of its representation and discussion across different media, and especially within the literary tradition, in a modern and contemporary, European and non-European perspective. The objective of the course is therefore also to offer students an in-depth pathway and opportunities to reflect on the capacity of literature to develop a critical representation of reality from political, legal, and moral standpoints.

By the end of the course, students will have acquired a solid understanding of the fundamental principles and regulations concerning human rights, the essential stages of their historical development, and the main issues related to their protection and promotion. They will be able to discuss these aspects critically, referring to the most relevant sources and employing appropriate disciplinary terminology. Students will also be familiar with a selection of literary texts in different languages and from diverse cultural contexts that engage with themes, events, or situations relevant to the study of human rights. They will be able to analyse and discuss these texts critically, adopting methodologically informed approaches from a literary-critical perspective. Finally, they will be able to articulate and evaluate the significance of literature for contemporary debates on human rights.