Disabling the American Good Life: Minor Literatures & the Human Right to Health

On February 27, 12:00-1:30PM, in 554 Barrows, there will be a lecture called, “Disabling the American Good Life: Minor Literatures & the Human Right to Health”.

This lecture will consider literature by Asian American and Chicana authors through the notional aspirations of a “right to health” and the rights of persons with disabilities, as they have been expressed in international human rights documents. It will ask how a human rights literacy unlocks a more capacious conception of political rights expressed in such “minor literatures,” than are usually granted in American social and political discourses.

Crystal Parikh is Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Her areas of research and teaching include Asian American studies, Latino studies, critical race theory, theories of gender and sexuality, and twentieth-century and contemporary American literature.