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Writing, Rights and Literature (Arts Weeks 2021)

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Venue: Online

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Lyndsey Stonebridge (University of Birmingham) and Julia Bell (Birkbeck) join Agnes Woolley to discuss the need for literary communities, political truth telling, and the relationship between writing and rights.


What is the relationship between writing and rights? Join Lyndsey Stonebridge and Birkbeck’s Julia Bell to debate the burning issue of how literature can register – but also shape a wider and more creative recognition of what ‘rights’ implies. Chaired by Agnes Woolley (Birkbeck, Director of MA Migration). 
 
Lyndsey Stonebridge’s polemical new book Writing and Righting (OUP, 2020) looks at the connection between literature and human rights, making the case for the moral and political value of literature in rightless times. In conversation with Julia Bell, Lyndsey will discuss the need for literary communities and political truth telling at a time when the language of rights is devalued. 
 
Lyndsey Stonebridge is Interdisciplinary Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham. Her recent books include the prizewinning Placeless People: Rights, Writing, and Refugees (OUP, 2018), and The Judicial Imagination: Writing after Nuremberg (EUP, 2011). Lyndsey is currently collaborating on a creative and interdisciplinary project with refugees and host communities in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, Refugee Hosts. A regular broadcaster and media commentator, she has written for The New Statesman, Prospect, and The New Humanist. 
 
Julia Bell is a writer and Reader in Creative Writing at Birkbeck. Her creative work includes poetry, lyric essays, short stories and novels. Her most recent book is Radical Attention: An Essay on the Battle for our Attention in the Age of Distraction (Peninsula Press, 2020). 

How to join this event 
This event takes place online. You will receive an email one hour before the start of the event with a link to join. The email will come from messenger@bbk.ac.uk - please check your junk/spam inbox if you have not received the email one hour before the start of the event. 
 
Find out more about Arts Weeks 2021 and book more events. 
 
 

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