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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...

W.G. Sebald Austerlitz (Modern Library, 2011)

 Austerlitz is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real...

Anna Holian Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (University of Michigan Press, 2011)

In May of 1945, there were more than eight million "displaced persons" (or DPs) in Germany---recently liberated foreign workers, concentration camp prisoners, and prisoners of war from all of Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as eastern Europeans who had fled west...

Timothy Snyder Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (Basic Books, 2012)

From the bestselling author of On Tyranny comes the definitive history of Hitler's and Stalin's wars against the civilians of Europe in World War II.

Americans call the Second World War The Good War. But before it even began, America's...

Balázs Majtényi, György Majtényi Contemporary History of Exclusion: The Roma Issue in Hungary from 1945 to 2015 (Central European University Press, 2016)

The volume presents the changing situation of the Roma in the second half of the 20th century and examines the politics of the Hungarian state regarding minorities by analyzing legal regulations, policy documents, archival sources and sociological surveys. In the...

Robeson Taj Frazier The East Is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination (Duke University Press, 2014)

During the Cold War, several prominent African American radical activist-intellectuals—including W.E.B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois, journalist William Worthy, Marxist feminist Vicki Garvin, and freedom fighters Mabel and Robert Williams—traveled and lived in China. There, they used a variety of...

Barbara Demick Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town (Random House, 2020)

Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of...

Laura Madokoro Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War (Harvard University Press, 2016)

The 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution is a subject of inexhaustible historical interest, but the plight of millions of Chinese who fled China during this tumultuous period has been largely forgotten. Elusive Refuge recovers the history of China’s twentieth-century refugees. Focusing...

Amanda Bennett, Sidney Rittenberg The Man Who Stayed Behind (Duke University Press, 2001)

The Man Who Stayed Behind is the remarkable account of Sidney Rittenberg, an American who was sent to China by the U.S. military in the 1940s. A student activist and labor organizer who was fluent in Chinese, Rittenberg became caught...

January T. Gross Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Penguin Books, 2002)

 One summer day in 1941, half of the Polish town of Jedwabne murdered the other half, 1,600 men, women, and children, all but seven of the town's Jews. "Neighbors" tells their story.

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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