Robin Kirk, Executive Director, Duke Human Rights Center of Cultural Anthropology and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Contact Info:   

Office Location:	Bivins 107
Office Phone:	(919) 660-4374
Email Address:

Teaching (Fall 2013):

• CULANTH 290S.05, CURRENT ISSUES (TOPICS) Synopsis

  Sanford TBA, TuTh 10:05 AM-11:20 AM

  (also cross-listed as PUBPOL 290S.05)

Office Hours:

Mondays and Wednesdays 1-4 pm

Education:

MFA	Vermont College of Fine Arts	2014
BA	University of Chicago	1982

Specialties:

South America
Human Rights
Europe
Cultural Memory
Politics of Memory
Transnational Studies

Research Interests:

Kirk is the author of three books, including More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America’s War in Colombia (PublicAffairs) and The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts Press). She is the coeditor of The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University) and helps edit Duke University Press’s World Readers series. Her essay on Colombia and human rights appears in Human Rights and Conflict Resolution in Context: Colombia, Sierra Leone, and Northern Ireland (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution, May 2009), edited by Eileen F. Babbitt and Ellen Lutz. An award-winning poet, Kirk also won the 2005 Glamour magazine non-fiction contest with her essay on the death penalty, available in the November 2005 issue. In the Fall of 2006, she was a Fulbright lecturer at the Human Rights Center at Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey. In 2005-2006, she was a consultant to the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first-ever truth commission within the United States. Kirk authored, co-authored and edited over twelve reports for Human Rights Watch, all available on-line. In the 1980s, Kirk reported for U.S. media from Peru, where she covered the war between the government and the Shining Path. During that time, she also prepared reports for the U.S. Committee on Refugees, including the first report ever on the plight of Peru’s internally displaced people. Kirk is a former Radcliffe Bunting Fellow and is a past winner of the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award for Freelance Writing. Kirk directs DukeEngage’s Duke in Belfast program. She is the associate director of Duke’s International Comparative Studies program.

Curriculum Vitae

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. R. Kirk, Letter from Belfast, in American Scholar, September 2011. Selected for Best American Travel Writing for 2012, edited by William T. Vollman (10-2-2012), pp. 231, Mariner Books, ISBN 9780547808970 [travel]  [abs]
2. R. Kirk, The Body in Pain: What do people of faith have to say about torture, Sojourners (06/2011) [The-Body-in-Pain-What-do-people-of-faith-have-to-say-about-torture]  [abs]
3. R. Kirk, Human Rights as a Contest of Meanings, Human Rights, Democracy, and Islamic Law, The World & Knowledges Otherwise Project, vol. 1 no. 1 (2012), pp. 1-5, Center for Global Studies and the Humanities at Duke [Human-Rights-as-a-Contest-of-Meanings]
4. R. Kirk, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution in Context: Colombia, Sierra Leone, and Northern Ireland, yracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution, edited by Eileen F. Babbitt and Ellen Lutz (May, 2009), pp. 368, Syracuse University Press, ISBN 978-0-8156-3205-4 [html]  [abs] [author's comments]
5. R. Kirk, The Lessons of Mapiripán: A response to Lesley Gill, Transforming Anthropology, vol. 13 no. 2 (Fall, 2005), pp. 116-118, University of California Press, ISSN 1051-0559 [The-Lessons-of-Mapiripan-A-Response-to-Lesley-Gill]