Shakespeare and the articulation of refugee rights at the UN

My project will examine refugee rights at the UN, starting with the context and conception of the 1951 Geneva Convention exploring how refugee protections developed at the UN and through the ICJ. I want to consider the UN ideal of a shared international responsibility for victims of persecution and I will examine Shakespeare's linguistic and imaginative legacy in developing a common conceptual language of human rights protections. In view of the UN's central mission, I will also consider what Shakespeare shows us about objective morality and the idea of borderless brotherhood.

I will look at considerations of refugee rights across the UN from international jurisprudence to UN treaties, the UNHCR and the multilateral fora and compare their conceptual and linguistic development with Shakespeare's articulation of the human condition. This will extend into a consideration of statelessness and exile in the UN and Shakespeare's work.

I will ground my research in the rapidly expanding interdisciplinary scholarship on law and literature. My research will encompass broad questions such as what should, or should not, engender international protection (or, as per Sir Thomas More "What country, by the nature of your error, Should give you harbor?") down to an examination of individual words such as 'torture' (first used as a verb in English in Henry IV part 2) or 'brotherhood' and 'reason' which appear in the 1951 Geneva convention, the UN charters and throughout Shakespeare's work. Linguistics can powerfully assist in mapping the cultural changes central to legal development.