Babson College English professor Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg will present her paper “Human Rights and Literature: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Scholarship and Pedagogy” at the World Universities Forum, 2008 (WUF), in Davos, Switzerland, January 31 – February 2.

Goldberg’s presentation examines the potential for interdisciplinary work in literature and human rights, and how they might inform each other in theoretical and pedagogical terms. She theorizes and explores how naming human rights concerns found in literary texts can help us to teach and engage more ethically with literature in the current global context. The goal is to demonstrate how interdisciplinary learning can help prepare students to enter the world as engaged, informed global citizens.

The WUF will examine the role and future of the University in a changing world. The forum has been created in the belief that there is an urgent need for academe to directly connect with the larger questions of our time, as the World Economic Forum (WEF), held in Davos just prior to the WUF, has forged a role of global intellectual leadership for politicians, business people and community leaders.

With the interests of WEF and universities increasingly aligned, the WUF has been planned as a counterpoint, enabling a genuine exchange of ideas between political and economic leaders, university sector leaders and leading higher education scholars. Universities affected by the issues that WEF addresses also have a greater role to play in solving the global problems and setting the agenda for the knowledge economy and society.

Goldberg is the author of Beyond Terror: Gender, Narrative, Human Rights (Rutgers University Press, 2007) and has published articles in journals and edited collections in the areas of multicultural literature and pedagogies, gender studies, and human rights. She is currently co-editing a collection of essays on torture since 9/11, along with a special issue of the journal Peace Review devoted to literature, film, and human rights.

She teaches courses in international literatures and human rights, as well as Babson's interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities Foundation course.

Goldberg earned both a B.A. and M.A. at Northeastern University, and a Ph.D. from Miami University of Ohio. In 2007 Goldberg was named Teacher of the Year by undergraduate students, and earned the Dean’s Teaching Award in 2006.