Elizabeth Kiss (NHC Fellow, 1995–96)

Fellowship Work Summary, 1995–96

Elizabeth Kiss revised several chapters of her book manuscript Rights as Instruments and, drawing on that text, wrote a talk for the National Humanities Center's public lecture series—"Alchemy or Fool's Gold? Sources and Implications of Our Widespread Disillusionment with Individual Rights." She wrote and/or substantially revised four essays dealing with issues of democracy and rights in East-Central Europe: "Do Parties Distort Democracy?" appeared in East European Constitutional Review (Winter 1996), while "Varieties of Assimilation: Citizenship and Nationality in East-Central Europe" will be included in a special issue of Philosophical Forum focusing on national identity; "Our Wounds, Our Selves: Collective Responsibility and Violence in Eastern Europe" is to be published in the journal Constellations, and "Group Rights in Principle and Practice: A Cautionary Tale" is slated for a volume tentatively entitled Rethinking Democracy for a New Century, edited by Ian Shapiro for Cambridge University Press. In addition, she re-worked an essay on feminism and rights that will appear in Reconstructing Political Theory: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Molly Shanley and Uma Narayan (Polity Press); wrote another on feminism and justice for A Companion to Feminist Philosophy, edited by Alison Jaggar and Iris Young (Blackwells); and drafted a third for Integrity and Conscience, a volume in the NOMOS series from New York University Press.