Words that Matter

Even as we mourn Hope Lewis’ passing, many readers have asked for more information on her human rights scholarship.

Professor Lewis’ scholarly work focused on the intersections between human rights and race, gender, disability, immigrant status, and other cross-cutting issues.  Her work in these areas was widely read and anthologized, and will remain an important part of the human rights canon far into the future.

 

Citations and abstracts for many of Professor Lewis’s publications are available at this link on bepress.  Perhaps the most widely read and cited of these works are: 

 

(1) Forgotten Sisters – a Report on Violence against Women with Disabilities: an overview of its nature, scope, causes and consequences, written with co-author Stephanie Ortoleval.  This cutting edge report calls on the international community to take account of women with disabilities in its fact-gathering and analysis.

 

(2) Between Irua and “Female Genital Mutilation”: Feminist Human Rights Discourse and the Cultural Divide, 8 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 1-55 (1995).  In this article, Professor Lewis examines the controversy over FGS terminology as it reflects more complex debates over FGS as a violation of international human rights.  She concludes that discussions about black feminist human rights approaches to FGS must address the unavoidable conflicts associated with eradication efforts and seek to create opportunities for cross-cultural solidarity; and

 

(3) The Boston Principles on the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Non-Citizens, a report developed by Hope Lewis and her Northeastern colleague Rachel Rosenbloom, in connection with the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy which Professor Lewis founded.

 

Professor Lewis’s textbook Human Rights in the Global Marketplace, the first of its kind on economic, social and cultural rights, is available here. 

 

In addition to her scholarly work, Professor Lewis was a prolific blogger, with posts often appearing on the Int Law Grrls blog.  Here is a link to a tribute on that blog site, with additional links to a number of her essays.

 

We join others in mourning the loss of Hope Lewis’s unique, insightful and impassioned voice, but are grateful for her many important contributions to the human rights movement and her courage and hope in the face of adversity.