CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Turin Humanities programme, “Enlightenment legacy: the rights of man in a global perspective” (1-3 SEPTEMBER 2022, Turin, deadline 20 JUNE 2022)

(Image source: Fondazione 1563)

 

The Turin Humanities Programme and Fondazione1563 are pleased to invite postgraduate students and early career researchers to submit their applications to the Summer School “Enlightenment legacy: the rights of man in a global perspective”.

The Summer School intends to elucidate, from a global perspective, a fundamental – although often neglected – aspect of the legacy of the Enlightenment to better understand its enduring and controversial presence over time in the fields of politics, society, law, and economics.

Namely, the Summer School will focus on the political and constitutional language of the rights of man, seen as the most lasting legacy of the cultural revolution through which the Enlightenment changed the course of global history, acting as a “laboratory of modernity”.

The Summer School will engage with the Enlightenment’s transformation of the old moral concept of natural rights into the modern political language of the “rights of man” and the ambitious Enlightenment project of bringing about the constitutionalization of the rights of man as part of a modern politics of emancipation that began well ahead of the French Revolution.

Moreover, the Summer School will explore the controversial affirmation and metamorphoses of the Enlightenment’s culture of the rights of man in a global context throughout the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. By so doing, the Summer School aims at shedding light on the Enlightenment’s relevance to deal with issues raised by the contemporary evolutions of global constitutionalism and governance, that still require to be addressed.

The THP Summer School provides a forum for postgraduate students and early career researchers in the field of humanities and the social sciences (history, philosophy, law, economics, political science and international relations) to engage with the most up-to-date academic debates and global historiographical currents on the Enlightenment and its cultural, political and legal legacy.

We encourage applications from researchers with a strong interest in human rights/rights of man and woman/natural rights in an historical, global and interdisciplinary setting. In particular, but not limited to:

• constitutions and the constitutionalization of human rights
• the development of representative democracy
• ancient and modern republicanism
• political economy and commerce
• the law of nations and international law
• race, slavery, colonialism

English will be the default language of the Summer School.

The Summer School programme includes keynote lectures of Professor Nicholas Cronk (Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford), Professor Dan Edelstein (Stanford University), Professor Serena Ferente (University of Amsterdam), Professor Vincenzo Ferrone (University of Torino), Professor Franco Motta (University of Torino), Professor Céline Spector (Sorbonne Université), Giovanni Bietti (composer, pianist and musicologist), early career researchers’ presentations of original manuscripts/book projects, workshops and roundtable discussions.

To foster dialogue between senior and young scholars, the Summer School offers its participants a unique opportunity to contribute to the broader discussion on the human rights theme with their own ideas and to test their research.

Successful applicants will also have the chance to present their papers in panel sessions which will be followed by a Q&A led by a panel discussant.

The full call for application can be found here.