Human Rights: Confronting Images and Testimonies March 4-5, 2010

Human Rights: Confronting Images and Testimonies
March 4-5, 2010

Organized by The OSU Department of English and Department of Art Living Culture Initiative, with the Wexner Center for the Arts

March 4 Thursday
STUDENT FORUM: WITNESSING AUTHORSHIP 1:30-3:00 Denney Hall 311
Students will examine theoretical, ethical, and methodological issues of witnessing as they relate to several contemporary human rights narratives. Presenters include: Cassandra Gamboa, Jen Herman, Annie Mendenhall, Kate Parker, Erika Strandjord, and Julia Voss.

COCO FUSCO: OPENING KEYNOTE 4:00 Wexner Film/Video Theater
Torture, the Feminine Touch:
Exploring Military Interrogation as Interculture Performance
Fusco is a performance artist, writer, and Associate Professor in the Fine Arts Program at the Parsons School for Design.

March 5 Friday
CONFERENCE SYMPOSIUM 9:00 Wexner Film/Video Theater
Welcome, Valerie Lee, Interim Vice Provost of Minority Affairs

PANEL #1 QUESTIONS OF EVIDENCE 9:30-11:30
Moderated by Amy Shuman (Professor, English/Folklore OSU)
Andrew Herscher (Professor University of Michigan) will discuss architecture in presentations of atrocity and the visualization of humanity in distress
Sam Gregory (Project Director at WITNESS) will discuss video documentary and new media in the human rights campaigns of Witness Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes Ashley Hunt, Artists, will discuss their project Combatant Status Review Tribunals held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo. Amy Horowitz (Jerusalem Project) will discuss music in disputed territory

RATNA KAPUR: KEYNOTE SPEAKER 11:30-12:30
W(h)ither Human Rights: A Critical Reflection. Kapur is the Director of the Centre for Feminist Legal Research in New Delhi; she will examine how the human rights project has been based on assumptions about difference produced partly in and through the colonial encounter.

Lunch Break 12:30-1:30

PANEL #2 NARRATING ATROCITY 1:30-3:30 Moderated by Wendy Hesford (Associate Professor, English OSU)Brenda Brueggemann (Professor, English/Disability Studies OSU) will discuss cinematic representations of disability from a human rights perspective) Carroll Bogert (Associate Director, Human Rights Watch) will discuss the role of testimony and personal narrative in the activist work of Human Rights Watch Amy Shuman (Professor, English/Folklore OSU) will discuss cultures of silence and atrocity narratives in the political asylum process

A PUBLIC READING 4:00-8:00
OSU Thompson Library, West Reading Room
Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954–003064: A Public Reading

A collaborative project by David Thorne, Katya Sander, Ashley Hunt, Sharon Hayes, Andrea Geyer is a four-hour public reading of unedited transcripts from 18 Combatant Status Review Tribunals held at the U.S. military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, between July 2004 and March 2005. A part of the larger collaborative work, 9 Scripts from a Nation at War, which premiered at Documenta 12 in 2007, this performance stages a 118-page excerpt from a massive collection that documents 558 tribunals, all of which were released on the Internet in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Defense in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Conference Wrap-Up 8:00-9:00 (buffet dinner provided)

Sponsored by The OSU College of Arts and Humanities, The Multicultural Center Collaborative Programming Grant, The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, The Institute for Women, Gender, and Public Policy, The Mershon Center for Public Policy, Project Narrative, Rhetorical Visions Fund, Center for Folklore Studies, The Department of Women’s Studies, Women in Development, Disability Studies, Melton Center for Jewish Studies, Sexuality Studies, and the Folklore Students Association

Coordinated by Ann Hamilton, Wendy Hesford, and Amy Shuman

If you have questions concerning access, wish to request a sign language interpreter or other accommodations for a disability please contact Amy Shuman at Shuman.1@osu.edu. Early requests are encouraged; a week will generally allow us to provide seamless service