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The virtual human rights library brings together resources from multiple libraries and information services, both internal and external, to create an online hub dedicated to the study of human rights. This curation is unique in its interdisciplinary concerns and focuses on writings and research from social sciences, humanities, and law.

The virtual library is continually updated with the latest academic research in issue areas, as well as with relevant films, recorded conversations, and other forms of media.

Searchable Database

Click into the dropdowns to select the disciplines, keywords, and media type for your search, and then hit "Apply."

Ellen Messer "Anthropology and Human Rights" Annual Review of Anthropology. 22:221-49

This essay reviews what anthropologists have contributed to the human rights framework and how they have used it for research and advocacy.

Benjamin Nathans Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (University of California Press, 2004)

A surprising number of Jews lived, literally and figuratively, "beyond the Pale" of Jewish Settlement in tsarist Russia during the half-century before the Revolution of 1917. Thanks to the availability of long-closed Russian archives, along with a wide range of...

Frederick Cooper Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference (Princeton University Press, 2018)

Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference offers a concise and sweeping overview of citizenship's complex evolution, from ancient Rome to the present. Political leaders and thinkers still debate, as they did in Republican Rome, whether the presumed equivalence of citizens is compatible...

Karen Engle "From Skepticism to Embrace: Human Rights and the American Anthropological Association from 1947-1999." Human Rights Quarterly 23: (2001) 536-559.

This article questions the characterization of the 1999 Declaration as a complete turnaround by studying the role that the 1947 Statement has played in the development of anthropological views on human rights. In particular, it takes a diachronic look at...

Tola Olu Pearce "Human Rights and Sociology: Some Observations from Africa." Social Problems 48, no. 1 (2001): 48-56.

In this paper, I examine the relationship between sociology and the human rights dis- course. A major segment of the discourse is between Western and nonwestern scholars join- ing the debate from a wide variety of disciplines including law, political...

Mark Goodale Introduction to "Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key" American Anthropologist. Vol. 108, No. 1 (Mar., 2006), pp. 1-8

In this "In Focus" introduction, I begin by offering an overviewof anthropology's engagements with human rights following the American Anthropological Association's (AAA) 1947 "Statement on Human Rights." After offering a rereading of the Statement, I describe the two major anthropological...

Aneira J. Edmunds "Precarious bodies: The securitization of the “veiled” woman in European human rights." The British Journal of Sociology 72, no. 2 (2021): 315-327.

This article examines how judicial human rights in Europe have adopted the security politics that have swept across Europe in recent years and how, through the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR)decision‐making over the veil they have contributed to the...

Maurice Samuels The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (University of Chicago Press, 2019)

Universal equality is a treasured political concept in France, but recent anxiety over the country's Muslim minority has led to an emphasis on a new form of universalism, one promoting loyalty to the nation at the expense of all ethnic...

Sharyn Roach Anleu "Sociologists confront human rights: the problem of universalism." Journal of Sociology 35, no. 2 (1999): 198-212.

This paper examines sociologists' current interest in the topics of human rights and globalisation. Some descnbe a world where everyone has rights (or at least a modicum of rights), because we are all human, and we all interact and communicate...

Mark Frezzo The Sociology of Human Rights (John Wiley & Sons, 2014.)

In this landmark new text, Mark Frezzo explores the sociological perspective on human rights, which he shows to be uniquely placed to illuminate the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions under which human rights norms and laws are devised, interpreted...

Please Note:

While the Virtual Library is now live for use, we are still working to update its contents and improve its functionality.  

It is usable by all visitors, but the hyperlinks to materials listed are for UChicago community members with a CNet ID and password.  

Please direct feedback and suggestions to Kathleen Cavanaugh

For technical assistance, email pozenhumanrights @ uchicago.edu.

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