The Center for Global Studies announces its annual
Spring Conference:

Arts after Atrocity:

Global Human Rights and Local Representations of Violence and Resistance

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

Research 1, Room 163
George Mason University,
Fairfax, VA.

The conference Arts after Atrocity: Global Human Rights and Local Representations of Violence and Resistance explores the connections between the arts, broadly conceived, and human rights and social justice. Specifically, the event aims to explore the myriad ways in which the arts are deployed to promote notions of human rights and social justice particularly in societies that are currently experiencing or that have recently emerged from periods of violence, civil conflict or authoritarian rule. In such societies, traditional mechanisms of transitional justice such as trials and truth commissions have played an important role in addressing the legacies of violence.
Yet scholars, practitioners and human rights advocates have noted that in many cases these mechanisms fail to reach broad audiences. Artistic expression, whether through art, film, music, dance, theater, performace, or mixed media, offers another arena in which the memory of the lived experience of violence is expressed and conveyed, to potenially larger and more massive publics. Indeed, artistic expression is a powerful means to interpolate societies toward new understandings of violence, power, and justice. We are interested in exploring ways in which artists and others in diverse settings have used artistic mediums and forms of representation in these ways.
The symposium is being organized by the Center for Global Studies at Mason, a research center with over 100 affiliate faculty members from the full range of academic fields whose central goal is to promote interdisciplinary research on globalization and international affairs. Recent conferences organized by the Center have focused on the “new” South-South relations and efforts to achieve accountability in Latin America and Africa after periods of atrocity.
For information on this event, contact CGS Co-Director Professor Jo-Marie Burt: jmburt@gmu.edu