Human Rights Courses

Posters, publications, social media graphics, handbills, and other graphic materials have long played a role in sustaining and shaping social movements. In this course, which is part studio class and part discussion, we will discuss the role of graphic design in building collective identity for social movements, with a particular focus on the labor movement. Students will identify artifacts from contemporary or past social movements and use them as the basis for writing and designing a publication.

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.

This course explores the historical and contemporary uses of police forces by various states to control and criminalize racialized populations, minority groups, and social movements in diverse geographical regions. By examining multiple histories of violence, occupation, and domination by police forces, students will delve into societal challenges that continue to affect everyday life. The course will also examine how the deployment of police forces, as part of a wave of punitive approaches that have gained popularity in many democratic nations in recent years, disrupts the social fabric of societies, establishes hierarchies, reinforces inequality, and facilitates the criminalization of dissent.

This course examines the legal and political dimensions of the phenomenon of international migration: when migrants cross territorial borders and enter a state to whose citizenry they do not belong. During the first half of the course, we will ask why and how migrants move - studying theoretical explanations for population flows - and why and how receiving states try either to attract them or to keep them out. We will reflect on the intersection of inequality and migration by critically examining how different groups of people on the move are categorized in different ways (e.g., as high or low-skilled workers, refugees, "illegal" immigrants, asylum-seekers) and, as a consequence, are granted different levels of territorial access and rights. We will also reflect on the human costs of policies of migration control and engage with normative debates on the ethics of borders. During the second half of the course, we will examine what happens to immigrants once they have arrived in the country of reception. Focusing on the cases of undocumented immigrants, asylum-seekers, unaccompanied children, humanitarian claimants, and families, we will ask how different groups claim rights and legal status in the host country and what challenges they encounter in the process. The class readings and lectures will mainly focus on migration to the US and Europe, but we will also briefly touch on immigration to developing countries in the Global South, which host 85% of the world's refugees.

Many of the toughest ethical and political challenges confronting the world today are related to environmental issues: for example, climate change, loss of biodiversity, the unsustainable use of natural resources, pollution and toxic waste, and other threats to the well-being of both present and future generations. Using both classic and contemporary works, this course will highlight some of the fundamental and unavoidable philosophical questions presented by such environmental issues. Does the environmental crisis demand radically new forms of ethical and political philosophizing and practice? Must an environmental ethic reject anthropocentrism? If so, what are the most plausible non-anthropocentric alternatives? What counts as the proper ethical treatment of non-human animals, living organisms, or ecosystems? What do the terms "nature" and "wilderness" even mean, and should "natural" environments as such have ethical and/or legal standing? What fundamental ethical and political perspectives inform such approaches as the "Land Ethic," ecofeminism, and deep ecology? Is there a plausible account of environmental justice applicable to both present and future generations? Are we now in the Anthropocene, and if so, is "adaptation" the best strategy at this historical juncture? How can the wild, the rural, and the urban all contribute to a better future for Planet Earth?

 In recent years, Muslim-Jewish relations in France have come to be portrayed as unbridgeable. This course asks how we got here. The course is designed to provide students with an introduction to the history of France and its empire through the lens of its Muslim and Jewish minorities. It begins with the French conquest of North Africa, interrogates the development of uneven French colonial policies towards Muslims and Jews, traces state violence against both groups from the Holocaust to the 1961 Paris massacre, and concludes with debates today over the right to wear the veil or kippah in public. The course provides students with practical skills in GIS mapping as a means to analyze the role space and place played in the production of Muslim-Jewish relations. Readings include key historiographical texts to introduce students to the major questions and debates, as well as primary sources and current events materials to formulate their own analyses. The course emphasizes the importance of fostering respectful, critical dialogue around often contentious topics. It does so with the aim of challenging students' pre-assumptions shaping their visions of a Muslim-Jewish past and present in order to reimagine a productive future. No previous skills in GIS mapping or French language knowledge required. 

From the Gilded Age to the age of Donald Trump, conservatives Christians have played a major role in shaping American politics and culture. This course will use primary and secondary sources to explore the development of the Christian Right in the United States. We will answer essential questions about the movement: Who joins it? Who leads it? And who funds it? We will examine how conservative Christians approach not only "moral" issues like abortion but also issues like economic regulation and foreign policy. Finally, we will seek to answer the question: What is the future of the Christian Right in an increasingly diverse America?

Laws, policies and practices in a range of countries -- and in select regional and international bodies -- threaten to further erode the already fragile right to freedom of expression under both international and domestic law. States' violations of the right have also produced a "chilling effect" that has created fear and uncertainty about what is protected speech, further undermining people's ability to harness various forms of expression as a means of dissent and/or protest. This survey course will be case heavy, using examples from select countries with a particular focus on developments over the last decade in North America and Europe. Topics to be addressed include the crackdown on expression in various protest movements, including the racial justice, austerity, BDS, climate justice and Palestine solidarity movements; the increasing use of national security justifications for restricting expression ("glorification"/"apology" of terrorism); big tech and online censorship; media freedom, including the case of Julian Assange; the growth in SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) and other lawsuits against journalists/media workers/nongovernmental actors; infringements on cultural and artistic forms expression; academic freedom, including the "cancellation" of specific voices within the academy; and the weaponization of freedom of expression by violent far right groups.

What are the fringes that erupt, resist, and reconfigure established power structures? How do they shift, befuddle and defy the authority of the State? Often, our focus is centered on the how those in power practice statecraft. This course shifts the lens to the margins, exploring how communities on the periphery engage in alternative "world-makings" that transcend the constraints of the nation-state. Through this course, we will interrogate global and imperial designs through the lives of those inhabiting wastelands, occupied/contested territories, and war-torn regions. Starting with the rise of the modern nation-state as inheritors of colonial legacies, and tracing its evolution under the neoliberal regime, this course will reveal the various frailties woven into the state structure that are exposed through these contestations. Students will engage with the revolutionary vocabularies and vernacular politics of marginalized groups as they assert their claims to land, rights, and community. By engaging with the transformative actions and narratives from the peripheries, students will gain a deeper understanding of how these communities navigate and reconfigure power dynamics beyond the reach of the state.

In this seminar, we think about the relationships between violence and the formation of contemporary political communities. Focusing on different geographical spaces from Africa (Rwanda), the Americas (Haiti, Canada and the U.S.) and Australia, we ask questions such as: is violence essential to the founding of political communities? How do different societies construct ideal notions of membership and exclusion, effect a sense of belonging? How are these narratives contested by diverse segments of society? Primarily using ethnographic monographs, a principal aim of the course is to think through the relationships between the present and the constituted past. We consider how this past structures our understanding of the political present, the sense of belonging and the anticipated future.

This is a community-engaged course which brings enrolled UChicago students and community members together for a quarter of learning, dialogue and knowledge building. We will examine and analyze narratives of incarceration and justice in multiple mediums (history, memoir, film, visual art, storytelling) to explore how narratives of incarceration and justice are documented, told and historicized. What are the dangers of a single story and how can dominant narratives be disrupted? What tools and methods can be deployed to surface previously marginalized lived experiences and truths? How have individuals and communities developed platforms to tell their stories and shape new futures? This course will include field trips, including visiting a class at Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, Illinois. By application only: apply by February 28 at noon.

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.

This course will introduce students to the field of human rights through two specific lenses. First, the course will emphasize human rights practices, demonstrating how human rights-in-action relates to and diverges from the ideals and discourses of human rights as laid out in documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Second, the course will view human rights from the perspective of affected communities, centering the experiences and critiques of those on the front lines of human rights crises. Through these two lenses, we will study the three most significant contemporary challenges to human rights in the world today: security regimes emerging from the post-9/11 paradigm of the global war on terror; escalating refugee crises; and climate change.

This course explores how the theory of justice relates to political practice and change. We will examine different theories about the relationship of theory to practice, including utopianism, system failure analysis, and pragmatism. We will consider what role both the idea of a just society and an analysis of the unjust status quo plays in our theorizing about justice. Among topics to be explored include the role of the utopian horizon in practice; how to be a realist without being a cynic; whether the addressee of political philosophy is universal or particular; what the role of the oppressed is in both theorizing and bringing change; and how the political philosopher relates to agents of change. Along the way we will engage with thinkers such as Erik Olin Wright, G.A. Cohen, Elizabeth Anderson, Tommie Shelby, David Estlund, and Pablo Gilabert. Time-permitting we may also examine a few historical texts that engage directly with these questions, including Aristotle, Kant, Marx, and Lukács.

While the modern human rights regime developed largely absent input from anthropology, the discipline stakes its scholarly identity on claims to expertise over the nature of human being and the diversity of human experience. Anthropologists have long studied aspects of lived experience of central concern to human rights, including state violence, cultural difference, and structural inequality. In recent decades, they have focused increasing attention on the institutions and practices through which activists adopt and rework human rights concepts in local political and social struggles. Against this backdrop, Human Rights and the Human Experience will deploy anthropology's distinctive knowledge practices and ethical sensitivities to analyze human rights as both global force and as creative resource in local movements for dignity, security, and human flourishing.

This course continues exploring liberatory violence by engaging the works of a selection of political theorists, historians, anthropologists, and revolutionary leaders engaged in armed struggle. Readings may include Georges Sorel and Walter Benjamin on violence; Talal Asad on suicide bombing; speeches and writings by Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, and Nelson Mandela; women guerrillas in the South African anti-apartheid struggle; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad; the German Red Army Faction; and violence inflicted on the self, such as among hunger strikers in Ireland, Palestine, and Turkey.

From the anti-slavery press through the New Journalists, every movement in American reporting has imagined human rights in a distinctive way. Some of those imaginaries have persisted and grown hegemonic, while others now languish in the archive-the old radical newspapers forgotten and unread. This course is dedicated to investigating the history of American journalism to see how the press and human rights coevolved: piecing together historical links between movements, recovering lost possibilities, and looking for future paths of development. Following a line from the abolitionists through the international movement against the Belgian Congo and onto contemporary New Yorker-style journalism, we will learn the history of the news in America. Through that history, we will see how developments in journalism-in content, form, and technology-ultimately changed international ideas of human rights.

How do gender and sexuality shape experiences of medicine? How does medicine shape experiences of gender and sexuality? This course critically examines gender, sexuality, and medicine as intertwined entities whose intersections teach us much about identities, institutions, and inequalities both historical and contemporary. Doubling as an introduction to medical sociology, this course considers medicine as an institution that produces knowledge, regulates bodies, shapes identities, and distributes access to health resources in ways that are uneven across, and significant for, categories of gender, sexuality, and other forms of social difference. We analyze these functions of medicine through some of its most prominent intersections with gender and sexuality in the United States, including the medicalization of homosexuality and gender variance, the medical regulation of reproduction from forced sterilizations to the rise of hospital births, the feminist health movement, intersex and gender-affirming medical practices, and the role of gender and sexual difference in medical research. Course materials consist primarily of ethnographic and popular sources. A major focus of the course is connecting personal experiences and popular sources to scholarly perspectives.

What does it mean to be disabled? Are narratives surrounding "reasonable accommodation". "inclusion" and "diversity" alert to the various intersections between disability, race, gender, sexual orientation or immigration status? How can we design a movement rooted in the lived and experiential accounts of disabled people? Informed by scholarly work, first person accounts, movies and other media by and for disabled people, "Discussing Disability" engages with these questions while pushing students to interrogate their own biases in how they approach disability

A 2021 UN report estimated that 21.5 million people have been forced to move, each year, for over a decade, due to climate change. The report states: "weather-related crises have triggered more than twice as much displacement as conflict and violence in the last decade" (UNHCR, 2021). In spite of mounting evidence that climate change is to blame for these catastrophic weather-related events and associated increases in migration, the UNHCR eligibility criteria for refugee status doesn't include climate change. Due to political challenges involved in considering such a definition change, the UN convened member states to establish a global compact for migration that takes the effects of climate change into consideration. The Global Compact suggests rights and obligations of climate change migrants, and standards to guide sovereign states in protecting these rights. Given the growth in climate change related migration over the last decade, and the complicated nature of implementation with such a broad international instrument such as the Global Compact, there is much room for development within the climate change and human mobility sector. This course will: examine the issue of climate change and its relationship to human mobility using human rights, political ecology, and social policy perspectives; consider how these different perspectives for understanding the problem suggest different types of policy solutions; and consider the impact of these solutions for those affected.

The drive to deliver humanitarian aid and improved living standards to the world far beyond one's own borders is a distinctively modern phenomenon. This course introduces students to the theories, actors, and practices that have shaped international development. We will explore the colonial origins of development as an idea, its evolution during the Cold War, and the implications of today's more multipolar world. We will see how different strategies have risen and fallen from favor, from big dams to trade to private philanthropy. Alongside scholarly histories, we will read reflections by development practitioners and critics and examine concrete case studies of development projects in action around the world.

This is a class about community organizing and how organizing brings about collective action. Through analysis of both historical and contemporary community organizing efforts, students will learn how organizing mobilizes people to gain power and influence over public policy and decision-making that directly impact them. Students will be introduced to different conceptual models of organizing, as well as how these models employ different theories of social change. The course emphasizes the "nuts-and-bolts" of organizing, ranging from strategic vision formulation to campaign development to one-on-one engagement. Students will have the opportunity to learn, discuss, and employ these different organizing skills and techniques through in-class exercises and group projects.

From the beginnings of political theory, justice has been imagined as a medical art applied to the body politic. Over the centuries, changes in the forms of state organization and in the means of medical treatment have modified this metaphor. In a time of great human mobility and weakening state frontiers, epidemic disease is able to travel fast and far, mutate in response to treatment, and defy the institutions invented to keep it under control: quarantine, the cordon sanitaire, immunization, and the management of populations. Public health services in many countries find themselves at a loss in dealing with these outbreaks of disease, a deficiency to which NGOs emerge as a response (an imperfect one to be sure). Through a series of readings in philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history of medicine, economics, and political science, we will attempt to reach an understanding of this crisis of both technique and legitimacy, and to trace options. Readings from Plato, Aristotle, the Hippocratic Corpus, Sima Qian, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Michel Foucault, Amartya Sen, Paul Farmer, Barbara Prainsack, Didier Fassin, and others.

This course will explore how international human rights law and principles provide a foundation for repairing the harms done by collective human rights trauma. The course focuses on Peace-building and Human Rights in an applied manner endeavoring a comprehensive approach to peace-building through humanitarian effort, human rights, and participation built on social work perspectives. In addition, it will examine the role social workers have both internationally and locally from policy to practice. The psychological impact and treatment of torture and trauma will be evaluated, particularly as experienced by people marginalized by the larger (privileged) society because of their gender, race and age. Various reparation and remedies used to recover from human rights trauma will be reviewed, as will social work perspectives that can enhance such efforts. This course will apply an ecological perspective, examining how these efforts affect individuals and communities