List of Contributors

Elizabeth S. Anker is Associate Professor in the English Department at Cornell University and Associate Member of the Faculty of Cornell Law School. Her first book is Fictions of Dignity: Embodying Human Rights in World Literature (2012), and her recent publications include essays in New Literary History, American Literary History, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, and the University of Toronto Quarterly. She is currently working on two book projects. The first, “Our Constitutional Me taphors: Law, Culture, and the Management of Crisis,” looks to literature, architecture, and film to study popular metaphors for constitutions, examining how they resolve challenges to democracy. Second, she is writing a book on “Human Rights and Critical Theory,” that explores the “human rights turn” within literary study. She is also co-editing two essay collections, one on “New Directions in Law and Literature” with Bernadette Meyler and another on “Rethinking Critique” with Rita Felski.

Nina Berman is Professor of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. She is the author of German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and Practices, 1000–1989 (2011), Impossible Missions? German Economic, Military, and Humanitarian Efforts in Africa (2004), and Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne: Zum Bild des Orients in der deutschsprachigen Kultur um 1900 (1997). A co-edited anthology (with Klaus Mühlhahn and Patrice Nganang), entitled German Colonialism Revisited: African, Asian, and Oceanic Experiences, was published in early 2014. Her current project, Land, Charity, and Romance: Kenyan-German Dynamics on the Coast of Kenya, is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, statistical data collection, and analyses of cultural representations and public debates, and assesses changes brought on by contemporary migration patterns that flow from nations of the northern hemisphere to nations of the southern hemisphere.

Rüdiger Bittner received the Dr. Phil. from Heidelberg University and the Habilitation in philosophy from Free University Berlin. He taught philosophy at the Universities of Heidelberg, Princeton, Hildesheim, Yale and Bielefeld. He is the author of What Reason Demands (1989) and Doing Things For Reasons (2001). He has also published articles on moral and political philosophy, theory of action and philosophy of mind, as well as historical studies of Augustine, Hobbes, Kant and Nietzsche. In 2012, the Gesellschaft für analytische Philosophie awarded him the Gottlob Frege-Prize.

Michael Bösch is Professor of Philosophy at Catholic University NRW in Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 1993 for his dissertation on Søren Kierkegaard and his Habilitation in 2002 with a thesis on Ernst Cassirer. Between 2003 and 2008, he was lecturer at the University of Kassel. His publications range from philosophical studies of Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger and Arendt to critical inquiries into cultural philosophy, political philosophy, social philosophy, hermeneutics, phenomenology and ontology.

Hans Joas is Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion at the Humboldt University of Berlin and Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago where he also belongs to the Committee on Social Thought. He received his Ph.D. (1979) in sociology from the Free University of Berlin and honorary doctorates from the University of Tübingen (2012) and Uppsala University in Sweden (2013). The most recent publications of his include, among others, The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights (2013), War in Social Thought: Hobbes to the Present (with W. Knöbl, 2013), The Axial Age and Its Consequences (with Robert Bellah, 2012), and Faith as an Option (2014).

Susanne Kaul is Heisenberg Fellow in the German Department (Literature and Media) at the University of Münster. She studied Philosophy, Linguistics and Literary Studies at the University of Paderborn and Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and received her Ph.D. and the Habilitation in Literary Studies from Bielefeld University. One of her seven books is titled Poetik der Gerechtigkeit: Shakespeare – Kleist (2008) and other publications range widely from film, modern literature, and narratology to ethics, and theories of humor. During the spring of 2012, Kaul was the Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame.

David Kim is Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages at the University of California Los Angeles. Until 2014, he was Assistant Professor of German and Inaugural Core Faculty of Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. He received his Ph.D. in German Studies from Harvard University and his publications explore cosmopolitanism, world literature, transnational adoption, postcolonial and translation theories, contemporary German and fin-de-siècle Austrian literatures, and human rights. He is currently finishing a book project, titled Parables for World Citizenship. He is also co-editor of The Postcolonial World under contract with Routledge.

Oliver Kohns is Attract Fellow at the University of Luxembourg, where he currently leads the research group “Aesthetical Figurations of the Political,” funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche (FNR). He studied German philology, sociology and history at the University of Cologne and received his Ph.D. (2006) in Comparative Literature from Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. His dissertation has been published under the title Die Verrücktheit des Sinns. Wahnsinn und Zeichen bei Kant, E.T.A. Hoffmann und Thomas Carlyle (2007). Further publications deal with literary theory, modern literature, and political aesthetics.

Kalliopi Lemos is a sculptor, painter and installation artist, born on the Greek island of Oinousses, near Chios. She studied painting and printing at Byam Shaw School of Art, University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins, where she also pursued post-graduate studies. She studied the art of Ikebana for 15 years. She lives and works in London. Lemos creates site-specific installations that often focus on human rights, and on issues such as the increasing global undocumented migration and the upholding of human dignity. During the last decade she has exhibited extensively in various international venues like Berlin, Istanbul, Athens and London. Her work can be found in private collections and on permanent display in New York, Istanbul and Canakkale.

Artemis Manolopoulou is an art historian based in Athens and she has a MA in History of Art and MA in Arts Policy and Management, both from Birkbeck College, University of London. After completing her postgraduate studies, she worked at the British Museum as Assistant Curator and as Curator of African Money. Since 2011, she has been working as Projects Manager at Kalliopi Lemos Fine Arts Ltd.

Samuel Moyn is a professor of law and history at Harvard University. Until 2014, he was James Bryce Professor of European Legal History at Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of California-Berkeley and a J.D. from Harvard University. He is the author of four books, most recently Human Rights and the Uses of History (2014). He is also editor of Humanity.

Thomas Pogge received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University and is currently Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs and founding Director of the Global Justice Program at Yale. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science, as well as President of Academics Stand Against Poverty, an international network that aims to enhance the impact of scholars, teachers and students on global poverty, and of Incentives for Global Health, a team effort toward developing a complement to the pharmaceutical patent regime that would improve access to advanced medicines worldwide. Pogge’s publications include Politics as Usual (2010), World Poverty and Human Rights (2008), John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice (2007), and Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right (2007).

Paul Slovic is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and a founder and President of Decision Research. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and honorary doctorates from the Stockholm School of Economics and the University of East Anglia. He co-directs a multidisciplinary initiative at the University of Oregon titled “Genocide and Mass Atrocities: Responsibility to Prevent.” His most recent research examines “psychic numbing” and the failure to respond to mass human tragedies. His books include The Perception of Risk (2000), The Social Amplification of Risk (2003), The Construction of Preference (2006), and The Feeling of Risk (2010).

Lora Wildenthal is Professor of History at Rice University in Houston, Texas, USA. She studied history at Rice, Freiburg University, and the University of Michigan, where she received her Ph.D. (1994). She is the author of German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (2001) and The Language of Human Rights in West Germany (2012). She is also the editor of Else Frobenius’s memoirs, Erinnerungen einer Journalistin: Zwischen Kaiserreich und Zweitem Weltkrieg (2005), and co-editor of Germany’s Colonial Pasts (2009).

Sebastian Wogenstein is Associate Professor of German in the Department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of a monograph, Horizonte der Moderne: Tragödie und Judentum von Cohen bis Levinas (2011), and co-editor of two books: Globale Kulturen--Kulturen der Globalisierung (2013) and An Grenzen: Literarische Erkundungen (2007). His other publications focus primarily on German-Jewish literature and intellectual history, contemporary German literature and theater, and literature and human rights. Wogenstein is a Faculty Associate of the University of Connecticut’s Human Rights Institute.

Daniel Västfjäll, Ph.D., is a research scientist at Decision Research and Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Linköping University. He is the director of Linköping Center of Behavioral- and NeuroEconomics. His research examines how affect influences judgment and decision making – in particular, the role of emotion in charitable giving. He has recently focused on how psychological factors such as singularity, identifiability, and scope influence decisions about resource allocations. A specific goal of this research has been to use multimethod approaches (brain data, physiology, behavior, and self-report) to examine the role of affect in charitable decisions. The research has been published in journals such as PLoS One, Journal of Neuroscience, Judgment and Decision Making, and Nature. Västfjälls’ basic research on the psychology of charitable giving is funded by awards from the National Science Foundation, the Swedish Science Foundation, and the European Commission.