The Foundations of Humanitarianism

The Program

Foundations of Humanitarianism was founded in 2005 by the directors of the University of Connecticut's Human Rights and Humanities Institutes. The program aims to bring the contributions of the humanities-history, literature, and philosophy-into the mainstream of human rights discourse. Specifically, it creates venues for dialogue among scholars to trace the intellectual, social, and cultural origins of the ethos of humanitarianism, which is the ideology and sensibility that has generated and sustained assertions of human rights for at least the past two centuries. It encourages researchers, moreover, to train humanities perspectives on pressing issues in contemporary human rights, humanitarian law, and humanitarian intervention, and also to assess the future of humanitarianism in relation to rival paradigms that articulate the connections and responsibilities that individuals, states, and transnational groups have to other human beings and the shared world in which they live.

The Program is currently under the direction of
Alexis Dudden, Associate Professor of History faculty website
and Kerry Bystrom, Assistant Professor of English faculty website.

The Program has developed a series of research initiatives designed to promote scholarship about humanitarianism, including:

• small faculty working groups focused on the themes of law, narrative and human rights; culture and humanitarianism; economic rights; and gender and humanitarianism

• a humanitarianism speaker series

• bi-annual international conferences on themes related to humanitarianism.
The 2006 conference was entitled "Humanitarianism and Narratives of Inflicted Suffering". The proceedings from this conference have been published in Richard Brown and Richard Wilson (eds), Humanitarianism and Suffering (Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2008). The upcoming conference, "In the Balance: Humanitarianism and Responsibility," is scheduled for October 10-12, 2008.

The Program also provides funding for initiatives in the performing and visual arts.
Recent Foundations of Humanitarianism co-sponsored initiatives include:

The Benton Art Museum
January 22 – March 30, 2008 The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942-1946
see: http://www.thebenton.org/exb_current.php?inc=5

Connecticut Repertory Theatre
2007 production of Pentecost
see: http://www.crt.uconn.edu/shows.htm#2

In 2008-10, the program will initiate a post-doctoral fellowship to enrich the research and teaching at the University of Connecticut in relation to humanitarianism.

Queries can be directed to Alexis Dudden or Kerry Bystrom.

Humanitarian Responses to Narratives of Inflicted Suffering Conference