The talks in this webinar will explore the fall quarter theme of the Humanitarianisms Sawyer Seminar Series: “Decentering Migration and Decolonizing Humanitarianism.” Registration required: http://bit.ly/SawyerSem-Nov12 Ilana Feldman, “Humanitarian Rights and Palestinian Presence” Palestinian refugees have long insisted both that humanitarianism is a right and that it entails specific obligations. Although the idea of humanitarian rights might seem an oxymoron, Palestinian efforts show that even as such demands may not have the force of law, they have, at least sometimes, been effective in changing practice. Ilana Feldman is Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs at George Washington University. She is the author of Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics (U. of California P. 2018). Pamela Ballinger, “Provincializing the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees” A rich body of scholarship has highlighted the particularistic and Eurocentric nature of the 1951 Convention. Less studied, however, are the ways in which the refugee definition also excluded many European displaced persons from recognition. Ballinger’s talk recuperates the complex efforts to categorize displacees in the Italian peninsula in the early postwar period, notably migrants produced by Italian decolonization. The Italian case offers an alternative pre-history to the Convention, one that further provincializes (to employ Chakrabarty’s term) the regime of international law and assistance developed around the Convention. Pamela Ballinger is Fred Cuny Chair in the History of Human Rights and Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is author of The World Refugees Made: Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy (Cornell 2020). This webinar is part of the Fall Quarter Theme: “Decentering Migration and Decolonizing Humanitarianism.” For more information, about Humanitarianisms: Migrations and Care Through the Global South please visit our website at bit.ly/humanitarianisms Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Simpson Center for the Humanities, and The Graduate School. Cosponsored by the Department of Anthropology; Department of History; Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies. Accommodation requests related to a disability should be made by [10 days in advance] to Simpson Center Events, 206-685-5260, scevents@uw.edu. |