Thomas Keenan

Thomas Keenan serves as Director of the Human Rights Project and Professor of Comparative Literature at Bard College, while co-founding the Center for Human Rights & the Arts. His institutional affiliations span academic leadership and human rights advocacy through boards of WITNESS, Scholars at Risk, and The Journal of Human Rights.

His research critically examines the intersection of human rights documentation, media representation, and literary theory. Key publications like Fables of Responsibility (1997) analyze ethical frameworks in literature, while Mengele's Skull (2012) pioneers forensic architecture methodologies for human rights investigations. Co-edited volumes including New Media, Old Media (2006) dissect how technological shifts reshape rights discourse, and The Flood of Rights (2017) explores artistic interventions in rights advocacy, revealing persistent tensions between visual evidence and political accountability.

As institutional leader of the Human Rights Project and Center for Human Rights & the Arts, Keenan cultivates cross-disciplinary collaborations between scholars, artists, and activists to develop innovative frameworks for documenting violations and challenging representational ethics in contemporary human rights practice.