Totalitarianism and the Humanities

Due to high demand, the Annual Humanities Horizons Lecture will now be held in the Thomas Davis Theatre, Arts Building room 2043. The Trinity Long Room Hub Annual Humanities Horizons Lecture for 2023 will be delivered by Prof Lyndsey Stonebridge (Interdisciplinary Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham). In February this year, photos appeared on social media of piles of books dumped in the streets outside the Pryazovskyi State University in Mariupol, allegedly by occupying Russian soldiers. In the US and elsewhere novels and history books are being weaponized in the culture wars. The humanities are back in the frontline of ideology and politics. In this lecture, Lyndsey Stonebridge turns to political-philosopher, Hannah Arendt’s writing on twentieth-century totalitarianism to argue why we need to fight for a new anti-totalitarian humanities today. Lyndsey Stonebridge is Interdisciplinary Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham. Her previous books include: The Judicial Imagination: Writing after Nuremberg (2011), winner of the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, 2014, Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees (2018), winner of the Modernist Studies Association Best Book Prize, 2018, and a collection of essay, Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights (2020). We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience will be published by Jonathan Cape in January 2024. Please register here.

Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: tlrh@tcd.ie