WORKSHOP: New Histories of Human Rights (Princeton, 25 April 2015)

(image: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1789, source: Patrimoine maçonnique)

International Law Reporter announced a workshop on the history of Human Rights at Princeton. Summary:

The field of human rights history has become much more crowded – and much more controversial -- over the past decade. New historical accounts are often deeply provocative and at odds with each other; they have also influenced debates about the goals and general value of human rights activism. In this colloquium, we will hear from some of the new historians of human rights, both to reflect on the historiographical stakes in this field, and on the relation between history and policy. What is the proper chronological scope of human rights history? What relation, if any, do older ideas about natural rights have with current notions of human rights? What role, if any, can history play in the crafting (or the criticism) of theoretical/normative arguments about human rights?

Program:

9:30am Welcome:

Jan-Werner Müller and Dan Edelstein

9:45am - 12:00pm Panel 1: Enlightment and Revolution

Chair:  Jan-Werner Müller
Vincenzo Ferrone - Enlightenment and the Rights of Man: Building the Political Language of Modernity.
Eric Slauter
Keith Baker
Dan Edelstein - Mind the Gap: Between the Early Modern and Modern Histories of Human Rights

1:00pm - 3:00pm Panel 2: Nations and Nationalisms

Chair:  Philip Nord
Amy Dru Stanley
Mira Siegelberg
Samuel Moyn - Theses on the Philosophy of Human Rights History

4:00am - 6:00pm Panel 3: Global Rights

Chair:  Charles Beitz
Turku Isiksel
Stephen Angle - China-Inspired Reflections on the History, Methodology, and Contents of Human Rights
Steven Jensen

 More information at Princeton's Center for Human Values.