(Un)welcome Imaginaries: (Non-)Fiction Literature on Fundamental Rights

International Interdisciplinary Conference (online)

Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań (Poland)

12-13th December 2025

Call for papers

In the first half of the twentieth century, H. G. Wells wrote about the need to codify basic human rights. Although his optimism about the creation of a global order was based on an overly idealized perception of reality, his diagnosis of which areas within human existence should be protected does not differ fundamentally from the later regulations under the Declaration of Human Rights. What is most interesting, however, is his description of the socio-political context and the reasons that underpinned the formulation of individual provisions. In 1940, referring to the “tendencies of our time”, Orwell (2015: 44) mentions the “shrinking distance” between people, “excessive mobility” and the need to “reorganize” the life of individual communities. He also writes about dangerous, post-war “rumor-spreading” operations, “propaganda”, and other similar “demoralizing practices”. Moreover, there is the issue of self-defense and undisguised resentment towards newcomers within nation-states, which initiates a process – blown “out of all proportion” – of designing “emergency legislation, regulations, and barriers” (Orwell 2015: 44-46). Taking into account the conclusions formulated by Orwell, it seems reasonable – in the third decade of the twenty-first century – to ask whether the Western world has not come full circle and found itself at the starting point diagnosed by the writer eighty years ago.

Central to this deliberation might be the following suggestion: perhaps it is time to revisit the issue of human rights, particularly in the context of contemporary fiction and nonfiction narratives. As Ali Smith (2015: xlv) states, quoting José Saramago's words, “rights exist even when they are not respected”. Therefore, we propose that the participants of the conference analyze and present their conclusions on the extent to which contemporary literature as well as texts of the past, both fictional and factual, outline – to paraphrase Timothy Snyder (2020: 4) – “our public malady” seen in our difficulty to respect fundamental human rights.

We invite researchers from various fields to collaborate with us, from literary and cultural scholars to sociologists, political scientists, and experts in the field of law, to comment on human rights.

We are looking for papers on:

-       Human rights as codified in the Declaration (https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights)

-       Artistic and literary reflections on human rights and their historical foundations

-       Activist and interventionist role of literature

-       Literature and other texts of culture on egalitarianism, equality, inclusion, exclusion and discriminatory discourse

-       Intersectionalities and human rights

-       Reflections on freedom of thought and conscience

-       Refugees and their testimonies

-         The literary/cultural/socio-political discourse of (un)dignity 

-         Literary stance on detention centers (or ‘new camps’)

-         (Un)hospitable societies and imagined communities

-         Artificial intelligence and (non-)human rights

-         Individual freedom and mass surveillance

-         ‘Others’ as Agamben’s disposable subjects

-         (Un)acceptable state violence

-         Transnational (un-)belonging

-         Dystopian/utopian expansion of rights

-         New common (im)morality

-         Old and new borders and boundaries vs fundamental rights

-         Pre-memory (Beiner) – predictions of human rights violations

The ‘(Un)welcome Imaginaries: (Non-)Fiction Literature on Fundamental Rights’ interdisciplinary conference will take place on December 12-13, 2025. The event will be held virtually via Zoom, allowing participants to share their screens and explore diverse presentation formats. Since the conference is international, we will take participants' time zones into account to ensure accessibility for all.

To attend the conference, please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words for your proposed 20-minute presentations, along with a short biographical note, by the end of July 2025. Proposals can be sent to hrconference2025@amu.edu.pl Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of September 2025.

The conference fee for presenters is 80 EURO.

The fee for attendees is 25 EURO.