In the continuing estrangement between the West and the Muslim Middle East, human rights are becoming increasingly enmeshed with territorial concerns. Marked by both substance and rhetoric, they are situated at the heart of many foreign policy decisions and doctrines of social change, and often serve as a justification for aggressive actions. In humanitarian and political debates about the topic, women and children are frequently considered first. Since the 1990s, human rights have become the most legitimate and legitimizing juridicial and cultural claim made on a woman's behalf. But what are...

How do historically marginalized groups expose the partiality and presumptions of educational institutions through autobiographical acts? How are the stories we tell used to justify resistance to change or institutional complacency? These are the questions Wendy S. Hesford asks as she considers the uses of autobiography in educational settings. This book demonstrates how autobiographical acts -- oral, written, performative, and visual -- play out in vexed and contradictory ways and how in the academy they can become sites of cultural struggle over multicultural education, sexual harassment,...

Spectacular Rhetorics is a rigorous analysis of the rhetorical frameworks and narratives that underlie human rights law, shape the process of cultural and legal recognition, and delimit public responses to violence and injustice. Integrating visual and textual criticism, Wendy S. Hesford scrutinizes spectacular rhetoric, the use of visual images and rhetoric to construct certain bodies, populations, and nations as victims and incorporate them into human rights discourses geared toward Westerners, chiefly Americans. Hesford presents a series of case studies critiquing the visual...