About the Conference

The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice and the Texas International Law Journal will host a multidisciplinary symposium on November 3 and 4, 2005, in the Law School's Eidman Courtroom. Continuing the Rapoport Center's focus on exploring the local and the global together, this conference will consider how international human rights law and discourse migrate, and how, in the process, issues of culture emerge. It will consider invocations of both rights and culture in the North as well as in the South, the West as well as the East. Are human rights meant to protect individuals from their culture, or to facilitate a right to culture? What is meant by both "rights" and "culture," how are they mutually constituted, and how do those meanings change as human rights law and advocacy travel?

The conference will consist of an opening and closing keynote and three panels. Each panel will include one or two principal papers and a number of commentators. Each will also invite approaches from a variety of disciplines, including law, anthropology, sociology, and literature.

The Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies, the South Asia Institute, the Center for East Asian Studies, and the Humanities Institute at The University of Texas will co-sponsor the event.

Opening keynote address by Philippe Sands, University College London, author of the recent book Lawless World (pdf), followed by a reception and book signing.

Closing keynote address by Surakiart Sathirathai, Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand, followed by a reception.

Archived Webcast: The conference can be viewed as streaming video by selecting the video links on the Schedule page. (Note: Webcast requires Windows Media Player to view)