Asian Studies
Contemporary Spanish Studies
Critical Inventions
Demographic Developments
First Nations & Colonial Encounter
Latin American Studies
Peace Politics in the Middle East
Religious Beliefs & Practices
Spanish History
Spirituality in Education

Freedom of Expression & Human Rights
Historical, Literary and Political Contexts

Liam Gearon
Dr Liam Gearon is Reader and Director of the Centre for Research in Human Rights at Roehampton University. The author and editor of numerous books in education, study of religion and literature, recent books include Landscapes of Encounter (2002), The Human Rights Handbook: A Global Perspective for Education (2003), Citizenship through Religious Education (2004) and the critically acclaimed Human Rights & Religion: A Reader (2002).

A Companion volume to Human Rights & Religion, it provides appendices for all those activists interested in furthering investigation of issues in writing and human rights

“I write this Foreword as the current President of English PEN. As Dr. Gearon notes, this organisation has played a significant role in campaigning in the UK against the Government’s proposals to make the incitement of religious hatred an offence…Would that we had had this book to help us, with its calm and assured discussion of the history that lies behind our prevailing anxiety today.” Alastair Niven

Freedom of Expression and Human Rights provides a critical and contentious overview of the fundamental relationship between writing and political dissent from early Greek democracy to post-Enlightenment forms of totalitarianism, such as Communism, Fascism and Nazism and through to modern forms of liberal democracy based upon universal human rights encapsulated by the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Complementing such historical contexts, this book explores the range of predominantly theological and religious, civil and political, social and cultural rationales for contemporary repression, contending that in the modern age at least freedom of expression issues are deeply affected not only by national law but by factors of a trans-national (ideological or theological) nature.

Finally – through a review key inter-governmental and non-governmental (NGO) agencies – the book examines current geo-political trends in the denial of freedom of expression, highlighting post-Cold War and post-September 11 shifts in political and religious repression, a movement in the locale of freedom of expression issues (especially towards electronic forms and Internet) and a heightening of global and trans-national dimensions in freedom of expression.

Freedom of Expression provides also a substantial series of appendices for scholars, researchers and activists interested in furthering investigation of issues in writing

	List of Contents to follow

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