Bridging Humanities and Social Science Frameworks to Human Rights

Rosa-Linda Fregoso
Latin American and Latino Studies
UC Santa Cruz

This working group built on the ongoing partnerships between scholars and activists involved in human rights projects. As scholars working in the humanities, social sciences, and media arts the group’s aim was to investigate and contribute to the development of an alternative epistemology of human rights. Drawing from interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives, this group sought to further the discussion of alternative human rights framing by building on the ongoing efforts of a transnational network of scholars and human rights advocates who move beyond human rights internationalism and legalism, and articulate the specificity of human rights within local histories, collective spaces, and the specificity of social justice projects. A primary objective of the project was to envision expanded articulations of human rights within the humanities and social sciences by engaging with and extending the work and analysis of a transnational feminist discourse on human rights that overcomes the disconnect that legal manifestations of human rights tend to have with the lived realities of women.