About the BookTheatre and Human Rights: The Politics of Dramatic Form develops theoretical intersections between theatre and human rights and provides methodologies to investigate human rights questions from within the perspective of theatre as a complex set of disciplines. While human rights research and programming often employ the arts as representations of human rights-related violations and abuses, this study focuses on dramatic form and structure, in addition to content, as uniquely positioned to interrogate important questions in human rights theory and practice. This project positions theatre as a method of examination in addition to the important purposes the arts serve to raise consciousness that accompany other, often considered more primary modes of analysis. A main feature of this approach includes emphasis on dialectical structures in drama and human rights and integration of applied theatre and critical ethnography with more traditional theatre. This integration will demonstrate how theatre and human rights operates beyond the arts as representation model, offering a primary means of analysis, activism, and political discourse. This book will be of great interest to theatre and human rights practitioners and activists, scholars, and students.   About the AuthorGary M. English is a Distinguished Professor of Drama at the University of Connecticut and Affiliate Faculty with the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, with whom he has taught Theatre and Human Rights for ten years. From 2010 through 2018, he lived and worked in the West Bank for a total of four years, including two years in the Jenin Refugee Camp where he served as Artistic Director of The Freedom Theatre, (2012-13). He also served as Visiting Professor and Head of the Media Studies program at Al/Quds Bard College in Abu Dis, in the West Bank, (2017-18). His research focuses on Palestinian theatre, theatre as a methodology to study human rights, and the use of theatre and cultural production to investigate the political conflict between Israel and Palestinians. Theatre and Human Rights: The Politics of Dramatic Form was published by Routledge in August, 2024. Previous publications include the volume Stories Under Occupation and other Plays from Palestine, co-edited with Samer Al-Saber, and published by Seagull Press in 2020, and "Artistic Practice and Production at the Jenin Freedom Theatre" within the anthology Theater in the Middle East: Between Performance and Politics. His most recent essay, "Palestinian Theatre: Alienation, Mediation and Assimilation in Cross Cultural Research" was recently released in the volume Arabs, Politics and Performance by Routledge in September 2024.   About this Event This event is sponsored by the Research Program on Arts & Human Rights, a collaborative program hosted at the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute led by faculty from the School of Fine Arts. This talk will take place in-person only in the Heritage Room, 4th Floor of Homer Babbidge Library, with a reception.

Conferences & Speakers