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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."

Jianglin Li 1959 拉薩! (New Century Press, 2010)

1959年3月10日,拉薩數萬民眾包圍達賴喇嘛的夏宮羅布林卡,阻止他按照原定計劃前往西藏軍區司令部觀看文藝演出。隨後民眾集會遊行,喊出了要求解放軍撤出西藏,要求西藏獨立的口號。那天在拉薩發生的事,史稱「1959年拉薩事件」。事件導致未滿24歲的西藏政教領袖,時任全國人大常委會副委員長、西藏自治區籌委會主任的第十四世達賴喇嘛丹增嘉措率家人和噶廈政府部分主要官員,於17日深夜離開羅布林卡,經過兩周跋涉,翻越喜馬拉雅山,前往印度尋求政治庇護。

本書是以 細緻入微的研究以及公正的立場揭示「1959年拉薩事件」歷史真相的開創性作品。

On March 10th, 1959, tens of thousands of people surrounded Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama's summer palace in Lhasa, preventing him from attending a prescheduled theater performance at the headquarters of the Tibetan Military Region. Soon afterwards, the...

C. L. R. James The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nd Edition (Vintage Books, 1989)

Originally published in 1938, this powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from...

Misagh Parsa Democracy in Iran: Why It Failed and How It Might Succeed (Harvard University Press, 2016)

The Green Movement protests that erupted in Iran in 2009 amid allegations of election fraud shook the Islamic Republic to its core. For the first time in decades, the adoption of serious liberal reforms seemed possible. But the opportunity proved...

Zheng Wang Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1964 (University of California Press, 2017)

Finding Women in the State is a provocative hidden history of socialist state feminists maneuvering behind the scenes at the core of the Chinese Communist Party. These women worked to advance gender and class equality in the early People's Republic...

Peter Snowdon The People Are Not an Image: Vernacular Video After the Arab Spring (London: Verso, 2020)

The wave of uprisings and revolutions that swept the Middle East and North Africa between 2010 and 2012 were most vividly transmitted throughout the world not by television or even social media, but in short videos produced by the participants...

Marjane Satrapi Persepolis (Pantheon Books, 2007)

Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir.

Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life...

Michael Dutton Policing Chinese Politics: A History (Duke University Press, 2005)

Beginning with the bloody communist purges of the Jiangxi era of the late 1920s and early 1930s and moving forward to the wild excesses of the Cultural Revolution, Policing Chinese Politics explores the question of revolutionary violence and the political...

István Rév Retroactive Justice: Prehistory of Post-Communism (Stanford University Press, 2005)

This unorthodox scholarly work dissects the ghosts of history in order to analyze how the past--both recent and distant--haunts posterity, and in what ways the present disfigures the image of times gone by. The book presents a novel history of...

Dalia Sofer The Septembers of Shiraz (Ecco Press, 2008)

In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested, wrongly accused of being a spy. Terrified by his disappearance, his family must reconcile a new world of cruelty and chaos with the collapse of everything they...

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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