Curriculum
About
Our Human Rights curriculum includes introductory courses on the philosophical foundations and contemporary issues in human rights, as well as elective courses with disciplinary, thematic, and/or regional perspectives. College students can enroll in our Human Rights in World Civilizations Core sequence or the Spring Quarter study abroad in Vienna.
The College Course Catalog contains a list of undergraduate Human Rights courses offered each year. You can also browse our previous course offerings (Autumn 2001-Spring 2020).
Read what the College’s updated Spring 2020 Pass/Fail policy means for Human Rights minors.
Current Courses
The Human Rights courses we’re offering during the 2022-23 academic year are included below:
Autumn Quarter 2022 courses
Winter Quarter 2023 courses
Spring Quarter 2023 courses (will be available during Winter 2023)
Courses and cross-lists will be updated as details become available. For the most current information about schedule and classroom details, use the Class Search on the Academic Information System.
At the bottom of each course description, you will find information on what distribution requirements the course satisfies for Human Rights Majors:
Required: This is a required course for the major.
Hum Foundation: This course satisfies the Humanities Foundation requirement.
Soc Foundation: This course satisfies the Social Sciences Foundation requirement.
Context: This course satisfies an elective requirement in the Context Stream.
Crisis: This course satisfies an elective requirement in the Crisis Stream.
R2HR: This course satisfies an elective requirement in the Right to Have Rights Stream.
Theory: This course satisfies an elective requirement in the Theory Stream.
Transition: This course satisfies an elective requirement in the Transition Stream.
Please contact Kathy Scott with questions about Human Rights course administration.
Autumn Quarter 2022 | Human Rights Courses
Human Rights in World Civilizations I
HMRT 10100
Section 1: T/Th: 9:30 - 10:50 AM, Jennifer Pitts, (Political Science)
Section 2: T/Th: 9:30 - 10:50 AM, Johanna Ransmeier, (History)
Section 3: T/Th: 2:00 - 3:20 PM, Kathryn Brackney, (Pozen)
Section 4: T/Th: 3:30 - 4:50 PM, Savitri Kunze, (History and Pozen)
Cross list: SOSC 24900
The first quarter begins with a set of conceptual problems and optics designed to introduce students to the critical study of human rights, opening up questions of the universal, human dignity, and the political along with the practices of witness and testimony. It is followed by two thematic clusters. "Anti-Slavery, Humanitarianism, and Rights" focuses on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to historicize notions of dignity, sympathy, and witness. "Declarations as a Human Rights Genre" examines revolutionary eighteenth-century rights declarations in France, the United States, and Haiti against the aspirations of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. These courses must be taken in sequence. If not used to satisfy the civilizations requirement, this course may be used to satisfy electives requirements in any of the five streams.
Human Rights: Contemporary Issues
HMRT 21001
Susan Gzesh, Senior Lecturer (The College)
Lecture: M/W, 4:30 - 5:50 PM
Cross-lists: HIST 29304, LLSO 21001, LACS 21001,SOSC 21001
This course examines basic human rights norms and concepts and selected contemporary human rights problems from across the globe, including human rights implications of the COVID pandemic. Beginning with an overview of the present crises and significant actors on the world stage, we will then examine the political setting for the United Nations' approval of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948. The post-World War 2 period was a period of optimism and fertile ground for the establishment of a universal rights regime, given the defeat of fascism in Europe. International jurists wanted to establish a framework of rights that went beyond the nation-state, taking into consideration the partitions of India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine - and the rising expectations of African-Americans in the U.S. and colonized peoples across Africa and Asia. But from the beginning, there were basic contradictions in a system of rights promulgated by representatives of nation-states that ruled colonial regimes, maintained de facto and de jure systems of racial discrimination, and imprisoned political dissidents and journalists. Cross-cutting themes of the course include the universalism of human rights, problems of impunity and accountability, notions of "exceptionalism," and the emerging issue of the "shamelessness" of authoritarian regimes. Students will research a human rights topic of their choosing, to be presented as either a final research paper or a group presentation.
Hum Foundation, Soc Foundation, Crisis
Militant Democracy and the Preventative State
HMRT 21005
Kathleen Cavanaugh, Executive Director, Senior Lecturer (Pozen Center & The College)
T/Th: 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Cross lists: PLSC 21005, HMRT 31005
Are states of exception still exceptional? The current debates and developments as well as the existential governmental crises has led to a securitization of rights. State security discourse narrates how states understand and mediate their legal obligations and has been used justify pre-emptive actions and measures which otherwise would not fit within an international law framework. When narrated in the public square, States often construct a discourse around a necessity defence—measures that may be extra-legal but argued to be necessary to protect democratic values and the democratic ‘way of life.’ This typifies what we refer to as ‘militant democratic’ language of the ‘preventive state’ and has been most visible in the raft of antiterrorism measures that were introduced after the events of September 11, 2001 and remain to date. This course will examine the impact of militant democracy and the preventative state on the current human rights landscape. It will look specifically how the narrative of prevention and protection has impacted normative changes to fundamental human rights and how the permanence of emergency is beginning to give the concept of ‘securitization of rights’ legal legs.
Crisis, Theory
Ecocentrism and Environmental Racism
HMRT 21207
Bart Schultz, (Philosophy)
M/W: 1:30 - 2:50 PM
Cross lists: PHIL 21207, MAPH 31207, PLSC 21207, ENST 21207, CRES 21207, CHST 21207
The aim of this course is to explore the tensions and convergences between two of the most profoundly important areas of environmental philosophy. "Ecocentrism" is the view that holistic systems such as ecosystems can be ethically considerable or "count" in a way somewhat comparable to human persons, and such a philosophical perspective has been shared by many prominent forms of environmentalism, from Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic to Deep Ecology to the worldviews of many Native American and Indigenous peoples. For some prominent environmental philosophers, a commitment to ecocentrism is the defining test of whether one is truly an environmental philosopher. "Environmental Racism" is one of the defining elements of environmental injustice, the way in which environmental crises and existential threats often reflect systemic discrimination, oppression, and domination in their disproportionate adverse impact on peoples of color, women, the global poor, LGBTQ populations, and Indigenous Peoples. Although historically, some have claimed that ecocentric organizations such as Greenpeace have neglected the problems of environmental injustice and racism in their quest to, e.g., "save the whales," a deeper analysis reveals a far more complicated picture, with many affinities and alliances between ecocentrists and activists seeking environmental justice. (A)
Crisis, Theory
Human Rights Research and Writing I
HMRT 22241
Alice Kim, Director of Human Rights Practice, (Pozen)
Date and Time: To be arranged with instructor
This course provides an introduction to human rights theory and method for students working on disciplinary or interdisciplinary BA thesis projects that examine human rights topics. Consent required.
R2HR, Transition
Artificial Intelligence, Algorithims and Human Rights
HMRT 23450
Austin Clyde, Pozen Graduate Lecturer, (Computer Science)
M/W: 1:30 - 2:50 PM
Cross lists: CMSC 10450, MAAD 13450
Algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) are a new source of global power, extending into nearly every aspect of life. Recently, The High Commissioner for Human Rights called for states to place moratoriums on AI until it is compliant with human rights. This course will take the first steps towards developing a human rights-based approach for analyzing algorithms and AI. What makes an algorithm discriminatory, and is the algorithm the right place to look? Is algorithmic bias avoidable? Does human review of algorithm sufficient, and in what cases? Do predictive models violate privacy even if they do not use or disclose someone's specific data? When does nudging violate political rights? How does algorithmic decision-making impact democracy? We will closely read Shoshana Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism on tour through the sociotechnical world of AI, alongside scholarship in law, philosophy, and computer science to breathe a human rights approach to algorithmic life. We will explore analytic toolkits from science and technology studies (STS) and the philosophy of technology to probe the relationship between worldmaking and technology through social, political, and technical lenses. No prior background in artificial intelligence, algorithms, or computer science is needed, although some familiarity with human-rights philosophy or practice may be helpful.
R2HR, Theory
Water Water Everywhere?
HMRT 24193
Susan Gzesh, Senior Lecturer (The College)
Fri: 9:30 AM - 12:20 PM
Cross lists: BPRO 24193, CHST 24193, SOSC 21005, ENST 24193, ARTH 24193
This interdisciplinary course explores aesthetics, environmental racism, and a human rights approach to the Commons to inform our perspective on the politics and aesthetics of water from the local to the global. The course will look at issues of scarcity and abundance through the lenses of art and human rights. The course will incorporate work by artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, who will visit the class. Students will consider works by other artists including Mel Chin, Allan Kaprow, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Fazal Sheikh, to understand how art can confront the 21st century's environmental challenges. Readings will include Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, and Fred Moten & Stefano Harney's The Undercommons. The course will include visits to site specific installations by artists Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle and Mel Chin, and visits to Chicago-area natural sites such as the Big Marsh and Lake Michigan. This course is an extension of a collaborative project at the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry with human rights lawyer Susan Gzesh, artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, and curator Abigail Winograd.
R2HR, Crisis
Narrating Social Change
HMRT 24205
Alice Kim, Director of Human Rights Practice, (Pozen)
Time: TBA
Cross lists: CRES 24205, CHST 24205
Consent Required
This course is a mixed enrollment class which brings UChicago students and incarcerated students together for a quarter of learning, dialogue and knowledge-building across the prison wall. We will examine how individuals, groups, and oppressed communities produce, reproduce and reimagine what equality, justice, agency and freedom mean as they engage in activism for social change. Throughout the quarter, we will explore contemporary and historical examples of people engaging in resistance to oppression. In some cases, people act alone or in small groups to provide themselves with limited agency. In other examples, people work collectively to build organizations and social movements that transform countries. To explore these topics, we will use materials from multiple mediums including film, poetry, memoir, and cultural works. This is the first time UChicago students will have the opportunity to participate in a mixed enrollment course with incarcerated students at Stateville. (In Spring 2020, we were scheduled to begin a mixed enrollment course when the pandemic shut down classes at Stateville Prison and UChicago pivoted to remote learning). Eight to ten UChicago students will be selected for enrollment in the course. If all goes according to plan, the class will be held on Fridays, 10:30-1:15pm at Stateville Correction Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. For UChicago students, classes may alternate between Stateville and UChicago's Hyde Park Campus.
R2HR, Transition
International Human Rights Law and Practice
HMRT 24823
Kathleen Cavanaugh, Executive Director, Senior Lecturer, (Pozen Center & The College)
T/Th: 12:30 - 1:50 PM
PLSC 24823
This course will introduce students to the legal architecture of international human rights law. Whilst the legal framing of rights emphasizes universality and the common good, its application reflects the historical compromises and political uncertainties of the times. This course will explore the tensions that are produced when politics meets 'the law' and examine the issues, actors, doctrines and practices that make up the human rights project. As human rights law is evolutive, we will look at how the human rights project has changed and evolved in connection to historical movements and post-colonial politics and has developed in order to address state violence, 'terrorism', minority rights, women's rights, gender and sexuality, transitional justice, health, and responsibility to protect, to name but a few. We will draw on case studies, including the United States, in order to examine the complicated role of the state as both perpetrator and protector and promoter of human rights. Students will be encouraged to think critically about the human rights project; how does it confront the underlying issues of injustice and abuse, as well as the inherent conceptual and structural limitations of supranational human rights mechanisms in addressing and providing remedies for the problems facing the world today.
Required
Documentary Production I
HMRT 25106
Instructor: TBA
T/Th: 11:00 AM - 1:50 PM
Cross lists: CMST 23930, CMST 33930, ARTV 33930, ARTV 23930, HMRT 35106, MAAD 23930
Documentary Video Production focuses on the making of independent documentary video. Examples of various modes of documentary production will be screened and discussed. Issues embedded in the genre, such as the ethics, the politics of representation, and the shifting lines between "the real" and "fiction" will be explored. Story development, pre-production strategies, and production techniques will be our focus, in particular-research, relationships, the camera, interviews and sound recording, shooting in available light, working in crews, and post-production editing. Students will work in crews and be expected to purchase a portable hard drive. A five-minute string-out/rough-cut will be screened at the end of the quarter. Students are strongly encouraged to take Doc Production 2 to complete their work.
Context, Transition
Documenting State Violence
HMRT 25238
Sasha Crawford-Holland, Pozen Graduate Lecturer, (Cinema Studies)
T/TH: 2:00 - 3:20 PM
Cross lists: CRES 25238, CMST 25238
Visual media have become central to activism against state violence. Throughout the past century, activists have deployed new technologies to bear witness to atrocity, record evidence, raise awareness, and promote justice. At the same time, media consistently fail to deliver lasting transformations and can even enable violence rather than counteracting it. In this class, we will explore how media practices support, undermine, and complicate efforts against state violence. How have activists employed documentary evidence?What assumptions have they made about communication, truth, difference, and justice? How do media frame what counts as violence? What are the politics of recording,seeing,and showing harm? What are the possibilities and limitations of emerging digital technologies?We will explore these issues across a range of media-such as photography, documentary film, comics, holograms, satellite and drone imagery, virtual reality experiences, social media platforms, and artificial intelligence-and case studies, including the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, the U.S. War on Terror, the Syrian civil war, the Movement for Black Lives, Indigenous resurgence in North America, and environmental violence in Guatemala. Students will be encouraged to think critically and creatively through assignments involving media analysis and media production.
Context, Transition
Queer South Asia
HMRT 26113
Nisha Kommattam, Comparative Literature
T/Th: 2:00 - 3:20 PM
Cross lists: CMLT 26113, CRES 26115, GNSE 26113, SALC 2611
This course explores representations of queerness, same-sex love, sexualities and debates around them by introducing students to a variety of literary texts translated from South Asian languages as well as films, geographically ranging from India and Pakistan to Sri Lanka. We will also read scholarship that will help us place the production and reception of these primary sources in historical, political, cultural and religious contexts. In particular, we will examine questions of history and continuity (recurrent themes and images); form and genre (differences of representation in mythological narratives, poetry, biography, fiction, erotic/legal/medical treatises); the relationship of gender to sexuality (differences and similarities between representations of male-male and female-female relations); queerness as a site for exploring other differences, such as caste or religious difference; and questions of cross-cultural and transnational dialogue and cultural specificity.
Context, R2HR
Religion and AIDS
HMRT 26301
Mark Lambert, (Divinity School)
T/Th: 3:30 - 4:50 PM
Cross lists: RLST 26301, PBPL 25301, CCTS 21014, HIPS 26301, HLTH 26301, GNSE 23142, HIST 28007, SOCI 20563
"The AIDS crisis was not an epoch that we survived. It is a battle that we are still fighting…when Americans talk about AIDS they are rarely just talking about a scientific problem or a pharmaceutical solution. They are instead offering a sociology of suffering and a plan for spiritual warfare." - Kathryn Lofton Is it possible to understand current debates over public health or the role of religion in the public sphere without first examining religious responses to the AIDS crisis? This course focuses on the emergence of the AIDS epidemic during the peak of the American culture wars. As such, students will analyze the fraught intersection of political power structures, medical epistemologies, and religious views on bodies, sex, and public morality. Through a varied catalog of disciplinary frameworks, e.g., history, theology, medical ethics, sociology of religion, and history of medicine, students will weigh the accuracy of Lofton's claim that for Americans, AIDS is more than just a disease. Thus, we will scrutinize moral rhetoric surrounding contraception and its public availability. We will discuss the extent to which religious philanthropy, especially on the international stage, reshaped approaches to global health. Finally, we will revisit the role of religious communities in providing both care for the sick and theological responses to suffering. Prior knowledge of religious studies and/or medical history is not required for the course.
Context, Crisis
United States Legal History
HMRT 27061
Evelyn Atkinson, (History)
T/Th: 9:30 - 10:50 AM
Cross lists: HIST 27605, LLSO 29704, AMER 27605, CRES 27605, GNSE 27605
This course focuses on the connections between law and society in modern America. It explores how legal doctrines and constitutional rules have defined individual rights and social relations in both the public and private spheres. It also examines political struggles that have transformed American law. Topics to be addressed include the meaning of rights; the regulation of property, work, race, and sexual relations; civil disobedience; and legal theory as cultural history. Readings include legal cases, judicial rulings, short stories, and legal and historical scholarship.
Context, Theory
The Transnational Refugee Regime
HMRT 28753
Lindsay Gifford, Assistant Research Professor, (Pozen Center)
M/W: 1:30 - 2:50 PM
The right to flee persecution and seek international protection has been codified in international Human Rights and customary law. This course will examine the contemporary transnational refugee regime that has developed around and been informed by this particular rights discourse, particularly in the aftermath of WWII. We will examine various transnational conventions and bodies intended to protect the persecuted, proposed de jure and de facto durable solutions for refugees, and how individuals and communities experience these structures during and after displacement. We also investigate the ways that the transnational refugee regime and its partners (such as NGOs and civil society organizations) are deeply imbricated in broader global power structures and dynamics, creating protections "gaps" and potential rights violations. Specific refugee case studies from around the world will be surveyed in order to contextualize and ground these inquiries.
Context, R2HR
Winter Quarter 2023 | Human Rights Courses
Human Rights in World Civilizations II
HMRT 10200
Section 1: T/Th: 9:30 - 10:50 AM, Ben Laurence, (Pozen Center)
Section 2: T/Th: 9:30 - 10:50 AM, Lindsay Gifford, (Pozen Center)
Section 3: T/Th: 2:00 - 3:20 PM, Chiara Galli, (Comparative Human Development)
Section 4: T/Th: 3:30 - 4:50 PM, Savitri Kunze, (History and Pozen)
Cross list: SOSC 24901
Four thematic clusters structure the second quarter. "Migration, Minorities, and Refugees" examines minority rights, the evolution of legal norms around refugees, and human trafficking. "Late Twentieth Century Human Rights Talk" explores the contestations between rights claims in the political-civil and socio-economic spheres, calls for sexual rights, and cultural representations of human rights abuses. "Global Justice" considers forms of international criminal law, transitional justice, and distributive justice. "Indigenous Rights as Human Rights" takes up the relatively new domain of the rights of indigenous peoples and how they relate to contemporary human rights practice.
This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. These courses must be taken in sequence. If not used to satisfy the civilizations requirement, this course may be used to satisfy electives requirements in any of the five streams.
Human Rights: Contemporary Issues
HMRT 21001
Susan Gzesh, Senior Lecturer, (The College)
T/Th: 9:30 - 10:50 AM
Cross lists: SOSC 21001, HIST 29304, LLSO 21001, LACS 21001, CHST 21001, CRES 21001
This course examines basic human rights norms and concepts and selected contemporary human rights problems from across the globe, including human rights implications of the COVID pandemic. Beginning with an overview of the present crises and significant actors on the world stage, we will then examine the political setting for the United Nations' approval of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948. The post-World War 2 period was a period of optimism and fertile ground for the establishment of a universal rights regime, given the defeat of fascism in Europe. International jurists wanted to establish a framework of rights that went beyond the nation-state, taking into consideration the partitions of India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine - and the rising expectations of African-Americans in the U.S. and colonized peoples across Africa and Asia. But from the beginning, there were basic contradictions in a system of rights promulgated by representatives of nation-states that ruled colonial regimes, maintained de facto and de jure systems of racial discrimination, and imprisoned political dissidents and journalists. Cross-cutting themes of the course include the universalism of human rights, problems of impunity and accountability, notions of "exceptionalism," and the emerging issue of the "shamelessness" of authoritarian regimes. Students will research a human rights topic of their choosing, to be presented as either a final research paper or a group presentation.
Hum Foundation, Soc Foundation, Crisis
Human Rights: Philosophical Foundations
HMRT 21002
Ben Laurence, Associate Instructional Professor, (Pozen Center)
T/Th: 2:00 - 3:20 PM
Cross lists: HMRT 31002, PHIL 21002, PHIL 31002, HIST 29319, HIST 39319, LLSO 21002, INRE 31602, MAPH 42002
In this class we explore the philosophical foundations of human rights, investigating theories of how our shared humanity in the context of an interdependent world gives rise to obligations of justice. Webegin by asking what rights are, how they are distinguished from other part of morality, and what role they play in our social and political life. But rights come in many varieties, and we are interested in human rights in particular. In later weeks, we will ask what makes something a human right, and how are human rights different from other kinds of rights. We will consider a number of contemporary philosophers (and one historian) who attempt to answer this question, including James Griffin, Joseph Raz, John Rawls, John Tasioulas, Samuel Moyn, Jiewuh Song, and Martha Nussbaum. Throughout we will be asking questions such as, "What makes something a human right?" "What role does human dignity play in grounding our human rights?" "Are human rights historical?" "What role does the nation and the individual play in our account of human rights?" "When can one nation legitimately intervene in the affairs of another nation?" "How can we respect the demands of justice while also respecting cultural difference?" "How do human rights relate to global inequality and markets?"
Hum Foundation, Theory
Creating a Different Image: Black Women's Filmmaking of the 1970s-90s
HMRT 21025
Allyson Field, Associate Professor, (Cinema and Media Studies and The College)
M/W: 1:30 - 2:50 PM
Cross lists: CMST 21025, CMST 31025, CRES 21025, GNSE 20128, GNSE 30128, HMRT 31025, HIST 27415, HIST 37415, KNOW 31025
This course will explore the rich intersections between African American women's filmmaking, literary production, and feminist thought from the 1970s to the early 1990s, with an emphasis on the formation of a Black women's film culture beginning in the 1970s. We will examine the range of Black feminisms presented through film and the ways that these films have challenged, countered, and reimagined dominant narratives about race, class, gender, and sexuality in America.
Transition, Context
Health and Human Rights
HMRT 21400
Renslow Sherer, MD, (UChicago Medicine) Evan Lyon, MD, (Partners In Health)
Th: Lecture, 9:30 - 10:50 AM
T: Discussion Sections 1 - 6, 9:30 - 10:50 AM
Cross lists: MEDC 60405, HMRT 31400, HLTH 21400
This course attempts to define health and health care in the context of human rights theory and practice. Does a "right to health" include a "right to health care"? We delineate health care financing in the United States and compare these systems with those of other nations. We explore specific issues of health and medical practice as they interface in areas of global conflict: torture, landmines, and poverty. Readings and discussions explore social determinants of health: housing, educational institutions, employment, and the fraying of social safety nets. We study vulnerable populations: foster children, refugees, and the mentally ill. Lastly, does a right to health include a right to pharmaceuticals? What does the big business of drug research and marketing mean for our own country and the world?
Undergrads register in discussion 1 thru 5; Graduates register only for discussion 6.
Hum Foundation, Soc Foundation, Crisis
Religion in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Peacemaking
HMRT 22040
David Barak-Gorodetsky, (Divinity School)
T/Th: 2:00 - 3:20 PM
Cross lists: RLST 22040, JWSC 24040, CRES 20240, HIST 25900
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is arguably the most intractable political conflict at present. The conflict has been subjected to various historiographies and narrative explorations, offering often-competing explanations in an attempt to understand its origin and evolvement, and also the failure of its resolution. This course explores the role of religion in the historical development of the conflict and in its contemporary manifestation, while at the same time probing the potential role of religion in the resolution of the conflict and outlining the history of attempts for religious peace-making in Israel/Palestine. Combining concrete historical analysis and intellectual history, the course will focus on the Jewish, Muslim and Christian views of the conflict and its potential resolution, relating to such themes as covenant, messianism, political theology, the sanctity of the land and the role of Jerusalem. These concepts and others will be explored against the backdrop of the concrete history of the conflict, focusing initially on the formative period of 1897-1948, pivoting to the 1967 war and its aftermath and concluding with the religionization of politics in recent decades and its far-reaching consequences.
Context, R2HR
Human Rights Research and Writing II
HMRT 22242
Alice Kim, Director of Human Rights Practice, (Pozen Center)
W: 4:30 - 6:20 PM
This course provides an introduction to human rights theory and method for students working on disciplinary or interdisciplinary BA thesis projects that examine human rights topics.
R2HR, Transition
Religion, Nation, Race
HMRT 23363
Samuel Catlin, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow and Lecturer, (Comparative Literature and The College)
W: 9:30 AM - 12:20 PM
Cross lists: CMLT 23336, CRES 23336, JWSC 23336, RLST 26336, SALC 23336
Religion, nation, race: as familiar as these terms and the categories they name may be, they prove strangely resistant to definition-especially when, as often happens, they are entangled with one another. This seminar course orients students in the busy field of contemporary theoretical writing on these categories and the myriad ways they mutually complicate one another. Our central texts will be two recent books addressing a pair of historically, culturally, and geographically disparate examples: Anustup Basu, Hindutva as Political Monotheism (2021), on Hindu right-wing nationalism in contemporary India, and Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Goy (2018), on the figure of the non-Jewish other in late-ancient Jewish literature. These books will be supplemented by shorter texts by philosophers, religionists, literary theorists, political scientists, and anthropologists. The major assignment for this course (in lieu of a final paper) is the collaborative production of a critical lexicon of keywords for the study of religion, nation, and race. Prerequisite: completion of a Social Sciences core sequence.
Theory, Context
Who Will Write Our History?' Truth, Justice, and Public Memorials
HMRT 23567
Kathryn Brackney, Postdoctoral Instructor, (Pozen Center)
T/Th: 12:30 - 1:50 PM
When protesters in support of Black Lives Matter toppled a statue of slave trader Edward Colston and threw it into Bristol Harbour in the summer of 2020, their actions represented the latest move in a remarkable shift in global memory culture: For nearly a century, victims and opponents of genocide, political persecution, and imperial exploitation have made increasingly successful demands for space in the public sphere to tell their stories and make claims for justice and reparations. Our seminar will track dramatic shifts in what counts as a monument and which groups are considered worthy of remembrance. Each week of the syllabus is organized around primary materials that raise foundational questions about history and its memorialization: Should monuments be physical structures, or can archives, testimony, and even criminal trials serve major public memorial functions too? Must monuments tell redemptive stories about oppression overcome, or is it important to memorialize episodes of suffering that ultimately do not have redemptive or heroic endings? Should monuments be permanent, or can ephemera preserve collective memory? Finally, is there any role for fantasy and counterfactuals in the ways that we collectively process the traumatic past?
Transition, Context
Human Rights: Migrant, Refugee, Citizen
HMRT 24701
Susan Gzesh, Senior Lecturer, (The College)
Fri: 9:30 AM - 12:20 PM
Cross lists: LACS 25303, SOSC 24701, SSAD 44701, LLSO 24701, HMRT 34701, CRES 24701
The fundamental principle underlying human rights is that they are inherent in the identity of all human beings, regardless of place and without regard to citizenship, nationality, or immigration status. Human rights are universal and must be respected everywhere and always. Human rights treaties and doctrines mandate that a person does not lose their human rights simply by crossing a border. While citizens enjoy certain political rights withheld from foreigners within any given nation-state, what ARE the rights of non-citizens in the contemporary world? Students will research a human rights topic of their choosing, to be presented as either a final research paper or a group presentation.
Crisis, R2HR
Documentary Production II
HMRT 25105
Marco Ferrari, Lecturer, (Cinema and Media and Studies)
W/Fri: 2:30 - 2:30 - 5:20 PM
Cross lists: CMST 23931, ARTV 33931,HMRT 25107, ARTV 23931, CMST 33931, MAAD 23931, CHST 23931
Documentary Video Production II focuses on the shaping and crafting of a non-Fiction video. Enrollment will be limited to those students who have taken Documentary Production I. The class will discuss issues of ethics, power, and representation in this most philosophical and problematic of genres. Students will be expected to write a treatment outline detailing their project and learn about granting agencies and budgeting. Production techniques will concentrate on the language of handheld camera versus tripod, interview methodologies, microphone placement including working with wireless systems and mixers, and lighting for the interview. Post-production will cover editing techniques including color correction and audio sweetening, how to prepare for exhibition, and distribution strategies.
Context, Transition
Islam, Politics and Gender
HMRT 25118
Hannah Ridge, Postdoctoral Scholar, (Pozen Center)
M/W: 1:30 - 2:50 PM
Cross lists: GNSE 25118, HMRT 35118, GNSE 35118
This course examines the relationship Islam and politics with a focus on gender and sexuality. For this class, politics is broadly construed, including religious law, family law, social issues, and war. Gender is an inextricable part of Islamic law, and the connection between Islam and the state pervades scholars' understanding and interpretation of political development in the Muslim world. While many texts and discussions will focus on women, gender is considered expansively. We will consider the role of sex in religious law, as well as sexual identity, gender identity, and sexual orientation. We will also incorporate areas outside of the Islamic "heartland" of the Middle East, such as Europe and Asia.
Context, R2HR
Environmental Justice in Chicago
HMRT 25704
Sarah E. Fredericks, Associate Professor, (Divinity School)
T/Th: 12:30 - 1:50 PM
Cross lists: RLST 25704, ENST 25704, KNOW 25704, PBPL 25704, CHST 25704, AMER 25704, CRES 25704
This course will examine the development of environmental justice theory and practice through social scientific and ethical literature about the subject as well as primary source accounts of environmental injustices. We will focus on environmental justice issues in Chicago including, but not limited to waste disposal, toxic air and water, the Chicago heat wave, and climate change. Particular attention will be paid to environmental racism and the often understudied role of religion in environmental justice theory and practice. Throughout the course we will explore how normative commitments are expressed in different types of literature as well as the basis for normative judgments and the types of authorities authors utilize and claim as they consider environmental justice.
Course Note: Graduate students need permission to enroll and will have additional requirements.
Context, Crisis
Legal Borderlands: Spaces of Exception in US History
HMRT 27321
Savitri Kunze, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, (Pozen Center)
W: 6:30 - 9:30 PM
The periphery of the United States is not only made up of physical borderlands but also of legal interstitial zones, places that test the reach of American sovereignty. This discussion-based seminar will look at places where American law bumps up against other defining markers, the contact zones that challenge the prevalent legal paradigms. We will examine how these areas define what constitutes an American; how the government makes specific identities within its jurisdiction visible and invisible. Topics we will cover include: statelessness and denaturalization, American extraterritorial courts in China, gender and sexuality under the law, outlawing "coolies," the insular cases and citizen-subjects, and Guantanamo Bay, not to mention the making and unmaking of physical borderlands around the United States.
Context, R2HR
Anthropological Approaches to Human Rights
HMRT 28215
Matt Furlong, Socila Science Teaching Fellow (Pozen Center)
T/Th: 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Cross lists: CRES 28215
How do human rights-based frameworks help people and societies solve problems of contemporary life? And do they always help? If not, how do human rights regimes also help generate new problems in contemporary life? For decades, anthropologists have used the concept of the "problem space" to help unpack how people and societies grasp rules and norms of all kinds as not simply sacred truths, but as tools used by people in search of resolution to some problem. By taking up human rights practices as social spaces in which people try to resolve problems, but also end up fragmenting, rationalizing, or otherwise remaking those original problems at times, this course unpacks key anthropological approaches to a central moral-legal framework of contemporary geopolitics. Students in the course will engage the contemporary 'human rights problem space' through a set of primarily ethnographic readings, as they consider how and why global social movements for land rights, sexual rights, and rights to mobility (among others) have become entangled with human rights frameworks in specific places and times.
Soc Core, Theory
When Cultures Collide: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies
HMRT 35600
Richard A. Shweder, Professor, (Comparative Human Development)
W: 9:30 AM - 12:20 PM
Cross lists: CHDV 45699, PSYC 45300, ANTH 45600, KNOW 45699, GNSE 45600, CHDV 25699
Coming to terms with diversity in an increasingly multicultural world has become one of the most pressing public policy projects for liberal democracies in the early 21st century. One way to come to terms with diversity is to try to understand the scope and limits of toleration for variety at different national sites where immigration from foreign lands has complicated the cultural landscape. This seminar examines a series of legal and moral questions about the proper response to norm conflict between mainstream populations and cultural minority groups (including old and new immigrants), with special reference to court cases that have arisen in the recent history of the United States.
Crisis, Theory
Violence, Trauma, Repair
HMRT 50005
Natacha Nsabimana, Assistant Professor, (Anthropology)
W: 1:30 - 4: 20 PM
Cross lists: ANTH 52510
This course offers an interdisciplinary encounter with three rich concepts of abiding interest to scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences: violence, trauma, and repair. A central goal for the seminar is to think through the relationships between these concepts and their effects in our contemporary world. We think about what is stake in thinking political violence in terms of trauma and notions of repair or social justice claims formulated through the language of human suffering, legal repair, and human rights. The course readings will focus on four historical contexts that will serve as touchstones throughout the course: the Holocaust, the legacies of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Rwandan Genocide, and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Transition, Context
Spring Quarter 2023 | Human Rights Courses TBA
Upcoming
Winter 2022 Human Rights Courses
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