Sean Bex graduated as a Master of Arts in English Literature and Linguistics (Ghent University 2012) and is currently reading for a PhD in English literature at Ghent University as part of an FWO project led by Stef Craps (Ghent University) and Pieter Vermeulen (Leuven University). His thesis explores the intersection of cultural memory and human rights through the lens of the oeuvre of American author Dave Eggers. At the core of this research lies a two-pronged hypothesis. Firstly, that literary representations of traumatic memories in works such as Eggers’s What Is the What (2006) and Zeitoun (2009) can provide historical grounding for abstract human-rights discourses. Secondly, that human-rights discourse can in turn help memories to be articulated within a political and institutional framework. Additionally, Sean examines the ethical problems and questions arising from the literary form of Eggers’s recent works, which are conceived as collaborative testimonies in which a successful white, male, American author and a disadvantaged person of colour join forces in bearing witness to the latter’s traumatic past.
