About

Arielle Stambler is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include postcolonial literature and theory, memory studies, and human rights. Her dissertation explores how 21st-century, English-language novels from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia critique and remake liberal human rights discourse. By rethinking human rights through the lens of contemporary postcolonial fiction, this project imagines more equal and democratic possibilities for what human rights could mean and reanimates the core concerns of postcolonial studies—inequality, power, and resistance. It also tracks new ways in which human rights discourse has influenced postcolonial literary form.

Arielle co-organizes UCLA’s Working Group in Memory Studies. Prior to pursuing her graduate degree, she received a B.A. in English from Yale University and taught English literature and composition courses at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her writing has appeared in ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature and PubLab at the Los Angeles Review of Books.