International Graduate Student Conference: LITERATURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

International Graduate Student Conference:
Literature and Human Rights,
to be held virtually, on February 27, 2021

Keynote speakers:
Dr. Ahdaf Soueif (MA ’73)
Award-Winning Author
Saturday, February 27, 2021
9:00 am - 5:30 pm

&
Ron Davis
Human Rights Activist
Sunday, February 28, 2021
3:00 pm - 6:30 pm

The Program of the conference:
Saturday, February 27, 2020
9:00 am – 9:15 am
Welcome & Opening Remarks.
Dr. Balthazar Beckett (AUC, ECLT).

9:15 am – 10:45 am
Panel 1: Human Rights & Literary Discourse: Theoretical Considerations
Chair: Dr. Martin Moraw (AUC, ECLT).
Aida Youssef (Rawi–Egypt's Heritage Review), “The Reconsideration of Political Empathy Through Self-Reflexivity in A Dry White Season and Death and the Maiden.”
Farah Osama Abdul Gawad (Cambridge University), “Disruptive Performances and Disruptions of Performativity in HM Naqvi’s Home Boy.”
Nada Ibrahim (AUC), “Epidemics and the Politics of Exclusion: Reading Cholera as Societal Critique in Andrée Chedid’s The Sixth Day.”
Jasmine Precious (New York University), “‘Room for All’: Creole Conquest in Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco.”

10:45 am – 11:00 am
Break.

11:00 am – 12:30 pm
Panel 2: Human Rights & Literature on Palestine & Iraq
Chair: Terri Ginsberg (AUC, Department of the Arts).
Omnya Ibrahim (Ain Shams University), “Unheard Voices: Palestinian Women Narrating Life and Prison.”
Nagwa Dawoud (Cairo University), “A Subaltern Approach to Human Rights: Decolonizing Human Rights in Selected Palestinian Literary Works.”
Caroline Benson (AUC), “Literature, Resistance, and Human Rights: Ghassan Kanafani’s Post-Nakba Writings.”
Somaya Abdul Wahhab (Alexandria University), “Baghdad Central: A Tale of A Usurped Nation.”

12:30 pm – 1:00 pm
Break.

01:00 pm – 2:00 pm:
Keynote Address
Dr. Ahdaf Soueif (award-winning author)
“What’s So Human About Human Rights?”
Introduced by Dr. Tahia Abdel Nasser (AUC, ECLT)



2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Panel 3: Women’s Rights, Children’s Rights, & LGBTQ Rights.
Chair: Dr. Catarina Belo (AUC, Philosophy
Merhan Ghamry (AASTMT), “Human Rights Violations and Displacement in Malala Yousafzai’s We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World.”
Osama Amer (AUC), “Autobiographical ‘Coming Out’: A Comparative Study of Homosexuality in Choukri’s For Bread Alone and Taia’s Salvation Army.”
Sara Hegazi (Alexandria University), “Marianne Khoury’s Let’s Talk and the Right to a Personal Story.”
Fatma Zoghlof (Ain Shams University), “The Myth of Rights": Children’s Rights in My Childhood Under Fire: A Sarajevo Diary by Nadja Halilobegovich.

3:30 pm – 3:45 pm
Break.

3:45 pm – 5:15 pm
Panel 4: Human Rights, Transatlantic Slavery, & Embodied Memory
Chair: Dr. Samuel Cooper (AUC, ECLT)
Aya Altelmissany (AUC), “(Anti)Narratives of Silent Language and Underwater Speech: A Comparative Reading of J.M. Coetzee’s Foe and M. Nourbese Philip’s Zong!”
Baheya Zeitoun (AUC), “Medical Experimentation on Slaves in the Antebellum South: John Brown’s Slave Life in Georgia.”
Engy Abaza (AUC), “Time Travel and the Dehumanization of The Female Body in Octavia Butler’s Kindred.”
Louise Akers (New York University), “Counterpoesis in M. Nourbese Philip’s ZONG! : On Memory and the Allegiance of Matter.”

5:15 pm – 5:30pm
Closing Remarks.
Dr. Balthazar Beckett (AUC, ECLT).


Sunday, February 28, 2020
3:00 pm – 4:30pm
Screening of
Marc Silver (dir.), 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets (2015)

4:30pm – 5:00pm
Break.

5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Keynote Address
Ron Davis (human rights activist & founder of the Jordan Davis Foundation)
“Black Fathers Grieve Too: Crossing the River Jordan.”
Introduced by Dr. Balthazar Beckett (AUC, ECLT)
& Salimah Hankins (U.S. Human Rights Network).
Followed by a discussion led by Prof. Doris Jones (AUC, RHET).

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