Lifelines: The Literature of Women's Human Rights, American University, 2002

This event, held in collaboration with The Center for Global Peace at American University, will feature readings by leading women authors of the global women's movement. Reader-Authors include: Elizabeth Alexander, Merle Collins, Fatema Mernissi, and Goli Taraghi.

Literature can weave lifelines connecting the listener to testimonies that inspire and call for solidarity. Women’s voices resonate across divides to convey understanding and appreciation for the pain of exile, torture, violence and war, and the possibility of starting fresh, of healing, safety, and peace.

Watch Lifelines 2002: Elizabeth Alexander

Watch Lifelines 2002: Goli Taraghi

Watch Lifelines 2002: Merle Collins

Watch Lifelines 2002: Fatema Mernissi

Reader-Authors:

Elizabeth Alexander teaches English and African American Studies at Yale University and in the summers at Cave Canem Poetry Workshop, devoted to supporting and nurturing the work of African-American poets. She was the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer in Residence at Smith College from 1997–1999, and the first director of Smith’s Poetry Center. Her works include The Venus Hottentot, Body of Life, and Antebellum Dream Book.

Goli Taraghi is an Iranian prize-winning short story writer and novelist. Before emigrating to France in 1980, she taught philosophy at Tehran University. Among her publications are I Too Am Che Guevara, Winter Sleep, and The Great Lady of My Soul. She has also written scripts for two major Iranian films, Pear Tree and Bita. Her forthcoming work is a novel entitled The Strange Behavior of Mr.A.in Exile.

Merle Collins, Grenadian writer, is professor in the Comparative Literature Program and the English Department at the University of Maryland. She has worked with women's organizations in Grenada and previously taught in the Caribbean Studies Program at the University of North London, England. Her writing reflects an interest in society and politics. Her publications include Angel, Rotten Pomerack, and The Color of Forgetting.

Fatema Mernissi, Professor of Sociology at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, is a prolific writer who has reinterpreted Islamic texts from a feminist perspective and supervised publication of a series of books on the legal status of women in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. She is the author of Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society, Dreams of Trespass; and other works.