With fellowship, history professor to record life of human rights legend

A human rights legend will soon have her compelling story recorded in full for the first time.

Amanda Demmer, associate professor of history at Virginia Tech, has received a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write a biography on Ginetta Sagan, a leader in the international human rights movement after World War II.

Sagan was imprisoned and tortured for six weeks during World War II. In 1951, she immigrated from Paris to the United States and later founded the West Coast Branch of Amnesty International’s U.S. section. She also started her own organization, the Aurora Foundation, to work on behalf of political prisoners. She facilitated major campaigns focused on Greece, Chile, Vietnam, Cambodia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

“In addition to writing reports, raising a staggering amount of money, and otherwise drawing attention to the human rights violations occurring in these countries, Sagan often traveled abroad when it was extremely dangerous to do so, putting her life on the line for the cause,” said Demmer. “She undertook all of these initiatives as an unpaid volunteer.”

Sagan won numerous accolades for her work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Sagan’s story also has the power to provide critical insight into the human condition, Demmer said.

“This is a book that has the potential to echo in profound and meaningful ways,” she said.

Demmer also recently received the prestigious Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize from The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, which recognizes excellence in teaching and research in the field of international relations.

The project

With the $60,000 grant, Demmer will spend a year focused solely on researching and writing Sagan’s biography. The freedom to focus on the project will allow Demmer to make timely progress toward seeing the book in print. She has already completed significant portions of the research and has drafts of several chapters.

Demmer plans to submit a book proposal and draft chapters to a trade press when the grant ends in July 2026.

Goals of the project

“This objective alone requires research in the United States and abroad, undertaken in different languages and requiring expertise in a dizzying number of historical subfields," Demmer said.

Demmer has the following additional goals:

• Reinterpret the rise of the human rights movement in the United States in the final decades of the 20th century.
• Correct and clarify history by integrating gender politics, new geographic lenses, and new institutions and individuals into an interdisciplinary field of scholarship.
• Provoke conversations that get to the heart of the human condition.

Why it matters

Sagan’s story provides insight into some of the most significant questions of the 20th century surrounding human rights, global responsibility, and the potential for individuals or nations to effect change. Her story offers valuable and relevant connections to current events.

“While Sagan was widely regarded as a living legend during her lifetime, she has almost entirely escaped scholars’ attention,” Demmer said. “Excavating the history of her life explains how past generations have answered these questions, illuminating both past precedents and roads not taken."