Past Human Rights Courses

In this mixed enrollment course, outside students from UChicago and inside students who are incarcerated at Stateville Prison will come together each week at Stateville Prison for a quarter of learning, dialogue and knowledge building across the prison wall. We will explore the possibilities, challenges and ethical considerations researchers should contemplate when pursuing research and writing within and about carceral constraints. We will also interrogate the different methods such as ethnography, interviews and even surveys used to amplify the voices of those inside. Finally, we will look to theories such as Black feminism and queer theory to think together about the construction of (subjugated) knowledge. Through weekly assignments and exercises including developing and conducting interviews and surveys, students will develop strategies and methods for the practice of research and writing about mass incarceration. Throughout the course, guest scholars, researchers and writers will be invited to share their relevant work with us. By the end of the quarter all students will be expected to produce a research proposal for a project on mass incarceration as well as contribute to a group research project. Due to the unique nature of this course, it will require availability all day (8am-3pm) on Thursdays during spring quarter Application required for enrollment: https://tinyurl.com/RDINStateville

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.

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.

The intersection of criminal law and immigration law is a growing field of law that is at the forefront of today's immigration debate. This course will explore how the tools of criminal enforcement, from incarceration to militarized policing have come to dominate immigration control, and how at the same time criminal laws related to immigration are enforced more like civil laws. Among the topics that will be explored in detail are: immigration deterrence through incarceration, deportation as a tool of crime prevention, the immigration consequences of crimes, and the relationship between mass incarceration and immigration detention.

Transitional justice is an interdisciplinary field of research and practice that explores how societies can recover from systemic violence. The theories and mechanisms of transitional justice have been used to promote democratization, peacebuilding, reconciliation, and the rule of law in societies around the world for more than four decades. The first part of this course asks how we should understand the objectives that transitional justice seeks to achieve? How should cross-cutting principles relating to inclusivity, local ownership, and victim-centredness underpin transitional justice work? The second part of the course therefore examines the specificities and challenges that arise in advancing transitional justice during conflict, within peace negotiations, or as part of post-peace agreement peacebuilding. The third part of the course examines these themes through case studies of Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, and Ukraine.

Most of us, most of the time, must show up to work every day in order to get the money we need to survive. Although this fact seems commonplace, it raises important questions about human rights and human freedom. Are people under capitalism forced to labor? What about people who perform dangerous jobs out of economic desperation? And, if people are forced to work, is that in any sense a violation of their rights? On the one hand, some argue that egalitarian societies should recognize a right not to work. On the other, some argue that people should have a right to perform work, or at least work that is meaningful and freely chosen. In this class, we will read, write, and think about what contemporary philosophers have to say about each of these questions.

The rights of persons with disabilities have become a new frontier of human rights across the world. This course introduces recent developments in concepts, tools, and practices of disability rights both internationally and in different regions/countries. We will pay specific attention to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including its principles, provisions on key topics (e.g., institutionalization, education, employment, and political participation), and the role of state and non-state actors in its implementation. We will also consider the implications of disability rights on global social development and humanitarian work. Moreover, we will critically examine barriers and concerns in realizing disability rights, areas where dominant understandings of disability rights fall short, and alternative approaches to conceptualizing and promoting justice for persons with disabilities. The course will consist of reading and critique of literature, large and small group discussions, guest lectures by practitioners, case studies, and student presentations. Students will develop skills to analyze disability policies or design/evaluate disability inclusive development projects in international settings.

The international human rights regime took form in the shadow of the atom bomb and WWII, a historical juncture, which for many marked the limits of techno-scientific rationality and progress. Utopian narratives of inevitable, technologically-driven social and economic progress nonetheless remain a cornerstone of American political and cultural imaginaries. In this course, we will draw on anthropology, law, and allied disciplines to explore the ambiguous intersections of technological innovation and human rights. Through a series of case studies, the course will consider how new technologies and their allied knowledge practices call into question the foundational categories of human rights law, complicating understandings of the individual, person hood, family, and life. The course will further examine how emerging developments in biotechnology, information technology, robotics, and AI variously enhance and undermine the substantive protections of human rights, including the rights to health, privacy, freedom of expression, security, and indigenous knowledge. Finally, we will consider how human rights norms and institutions can be mobilized to inform and constrain the design and application of potentially threatening new technologies.

This course employs an interdisciplinary approach to examine the work of social justice advocacy for and by non-citizens in the U.S. including asylum seekers, immigrant workers, women as migrants, migrant children, and the undocumented. Our readings will place selected case studies in their local, national, and international context. We will draw on sources from law, history, sociology, political science, and the arts. Texts, films, and guest speakers will address the history of immigrants' rights advocacy in the Chicago and the U.S., with selected global examples. Topics will include the rights of asylum seekers, the problems of migrant workers (guest-workers and the undocumented), women and children as migrants, and the impact of the global pandemic on migration in general. The case studies will illuminate the role of immigrants as leaders and the relationship between impacted communities and the state. We will meet with journalists, elected officials, organizers, academics, artists, lawyers, and immigrant community leaders to discuss distinct approaches to migrants' rights advocacy.

This course for undergraduate majors and non-majors critically explore the role of music in acts of mourning, resistance, and healing as well as in moments contributing to trauma and recovery. Each week will center around a different case study of an instance in which music has been a primary agent for documentation, memorialization, and healing for both the individual and the collective. We will engage with a wide array of both popular and art musical materials. Throughout the class, we will ask: How might music be used to cause harm? What are the ethical implications of beautiful music? Why does some music aesthetically lend itself to ideas of recovery? How do we contend with music's alleged universality and its position as a human right when it has the potentiality to both scar and soothe? In addressing these questions, we will contend with the role of musicology and humanistic research in times of upheaval. Please be aware that this course will cover sensitive topics including: military, racialized, sexual, and domestic violence.

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.

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.

This civilizations sequence introduces students to the critical study of human rights, through interdisciplinary texts presented in a mix of historical and conceptual units. The first quarter opens with a unit on universality, human dignity, and human rights as these concepts came to play a role in the politics of the new United Nations and the political practice of domestic social movements. It is followed by three thematic clusters, “Bearing Witness and Testimony”, that explores the different ways that witnessing and testimony figures in the politics of post-atrocity and memory; "Anti-Slavery, Humanitarianism, and Rights" that explores possible prefigurations of human rights politics in earlier practices of anti-slavery and humanitarian concern; and "Declarations as a Human Rights Genre” that explores the genre of rights declarations, rooting The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in a longer tradition, reaching back into the late 18th century. 
 
This course is part of a 2-part sequence and satisfies a civilizations sequence requirement. If not used to satisfy that requirement, the course may be used to satisfy Human Rights Major Requirements as an elective in any stream.

The US Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization has sharpened our awareness of the perils that besiege our reproductive futures. This course offers a deep dive into comparative reproductive justice theory and practice rooted both in unique cultural particularities and in globally resonant issues and challenges. While exposing students to the foundational texts shaping the reproductive justice movement, the course shall engage critically with the possibilities and limitations of a rights-based framework and the challenges and liberatory potential of a justice-based approach to reproductive decision-making. Drawing from literature and media from across the world, the course shall provide global perspectives on issues as varied as contraception, assisted reproductive technology, mass sterilization, and family leave, along with scholarship and resources from the US. While engaging critically with theory, the course shall also provide practitioners' perspectives through guest lectures by ethnographers, lawyers, and healthcare professionals working in the field. This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors. 

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-19 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.

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. We begin by asking what rights are, how they are distinguished from other parts 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 human rights differ 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, John Rawls, John Tasioulas, Samuel Moyn, Jiewuh Song, Pablo Gilabert, 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 differences?" "How do human rights relate to global inequality and markets?"

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. 

The aim of this course is to investigate the ways in which ethnographers have dealt with questions of human rights and humanitarianism. While ethnography is the hallmark of anthropology, it has gained popularity in recent years in other fields of social science, from sociology to political science. Over the course of the quarter, we will discuss what makes a human rights ethnography and what we can learn about human rights from the perspective of ethnography. Rather than reading chapters and articles, we will focus on excerpts of full ethnographies. The purpose of this is to delve into the nitty-gritty details of living with (or without) human rights. Students will not only learn about human rights from an ethnographic perspective, but they will also gain familiarity with ethnography as a genre.

This workshop is for Human Rights Majors who are either writing a BA Thesis or doing a Capstone Project. It is informally scheduled and meets roughly every other week in Autumn and Winter Quarters. Participants will receive training in scholarly and other skill sets needed to complete the projects; they will workshop their theses and projects with one another and their praeceptor, receiving critical feedback; and they will collectively problem solve. The workshop is intended as a supportive environment, the function of which is to help students realize their vision and push their scholarly limits. It is 0 credits in the Autumn Quarter and 100 credits in the Winter Quarter. 
 
This is a required course for 4th-year Human Rights Majors, unless they are writing a human rights related BA Thesis in another major that has its own workshop. 

The city of Chicago has welcomed over 45,000 migrants and asylum-seekers from Latin America over the past few years and has witnessed efforts to effect a welcoming and sanctuary city through government, non-profit, mutual aid network and individual volunteer work. Students in this course will conduct in-person field research with migrants and service networks to explore the ways that Chicagoans both new and established imagine and attempt to create a sanctuary or welcoming city. Through field research practice, students will gain experience with ethnographic methods of participant-observation, taking fieldnotes, conducting interviews and ethnographic writing. Accompanying course readings will guide us through ethnographic methods, the root causes of migration, migration pathways and infrastructure, refugee and migrant reception and sanctuary city concepts and policies.

The international human rights regime took form in the shadow of the atom bomb and WWII, a historical juncture which, for many, marked the limits of techno-scientific rationality and progress. Utopian narratives of inevitable, technologically-driven social and economic progress nonetheless remain a cornerstone of American political and cultural imaginaries. In this course, we will draw on anthropology, law, and allied disciplines to explore the ambiguous intersections of technological innovation and human rights. Through a series of case studies, the course will consider how new technologies and their allied knowledge practices call into question the foundational categories of human rights law, complicating understandings of the individual, personhood, family, and life. The course will further examine how emerging developments in biotechnology, information technology, robotics, and AI variously enhance and undermine the substantive protections of human rights, including the rights to health, privacy, freedom of expression, security, and indigenous knowledge. Finally, we will consider how human rights norms and institutions can be mobilized to inform and constrain the design and application of potentially threatening new technologies.

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 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.

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 CMST 23931 Documentary Production II to complete their work. Consent of instructor is required to enroll.

In American public discourse, it is common to hear abortion referred to as a "religious issue." But is abortion a religious issue? If so, in what ways, to whom, and why? In this course we will answer these questions by tracing the relationship between religion and abortion in American history. We will examine the kinds of claims religious groups have made about abortion; how religion has shaped the development of medical, legal, economic, and cultural perspectives on the topic; how debates over abortion have led to the rise of a certain kind of religious politics in the United States; and how issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and the body are implicated in this conversation. Although the course will cover a range of time periods, religious traditions, and types of data (abortion records from Puritan New England, enslaved people's use of herbal medicine to induce miscarriage, and Jewish considerations of the personhood of the fetus, among others), we will give particular attention to the significance of Christianity in legal and political debates about abortion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. There are no prerequisites for this course and no background in Religious Studies is required. However, this course may be particularly well-suited to students interested in thinking about how certain themes or areas of study-medicine and medical sciences, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, political science-converge with religion and Religious Studies.

This course explores anticolonial worldbuilding through literature, film, art, and philosophy. It focuses on the role of the cultural Cold War in shaping anticolonial aesthetics and politics during the twentieth century as well as its impact on our current political moment. The mid-century was characterized by an expansion of anticolonial festivals, exchanges, and congresses and marked by political crises and coalitional solidarity across Vietnam, Palestine, Cuba, Soviet and US imperial expansion, and the May 1968 student protests. We will explore how Pan-Arab, Pan-African, Non-Aligned/Global South, Marxist-Leninist, Indigenous land rights, and racial justice movements mobilized class, gender, and language politics. Exploring anticolonial literature, film, and art across a multilingual and transnational archive, we will ask how socialist and speculative realism, engaged literature, third cinema, agitprop, and other aesthetic movements generated powerful internationalist imaginations and networks of resistance.

This course introduces students to games of complete information through solving problem sets. We will cover the concepts of dominant strategies, rationalizable strategies, Nash equilibrium, subgame perfection, backward induction, and imperfect information. The course will be centered around several applications of game theory to politics: electoral competition, agenda control, lobbying, voting in legislatures, and coalition games. 

Taught by Anand Grover, a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health and a practicing Senior Counsel in the Supreme Court of India, this course addresses the practical challenges of realizing the global right to health. Topics include HIV, COVID-19, abortion, and access to affordable medicines. This intensive, 1-credit course is open to law students with an interest in health and human rights. It can also be audited via Zoom by students from other departments and disciplines, including undergraduates. Non-law students seeking consent should email rsherer@bsd.uchicago.edu a resume and a brief description of their interest.
 

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.

Medical disciplines from psychiatry to surgery have all attempted to identify and to treat gendered misalignment, while queer theory and feminisms have simultaneously tried to understand if and how trans- theories should be integrated into their respective intellectual projects. This course looks at the logics of the medical treatment of transgender (and trans- more broadly) in order to consider the mutual entanglement of clinical processes with theoretical ones. Over the quarter we will read ethnographic accounts and theoretical essays, listen to oral histories, discuss the intersections of race and ability with gender, and interrogate concepts like "material bodies" and "objective science". Primary course questions include: 1. How is "trans-" conceptualized, experienced, and lived? How has trans-studies distinguished itself from feminisms and queer theories? 2. What are the objects, processes, and problematics trans- medicine identifies and treats? How is "trans-" understood and operationalized through medical practices? 3. What meanings of health, power, knowledge, gender, and the body are utilized or defined by our authors? What relations can we draw between them?

This course offers an extended investigation of the origins, meanings, and legacies of one of the most consequential documents in world history: the Declaration of Independence. Primary and secondary readings provide a series of philosophical, political, economic, social, religious, literary, and legal perspectives on the text's sources and meanings; its drafting, circulation, and early reception in the age of the American Revolution; and its changing place in American culture and world politics over nearly 250 years. (1650-1830, 1830-1940) In addition to the noted class times, there will also be discussion sections to be scheduled once the class begins.

Globalizing and local forces are generating a new politics in the United States and around the world. This course explores this new politics by mapping its emerging elements: the rise of social issues, ethno-religious and regional attachments, environmentalism, gender and life-style identity issues, new social movements, transformed political parties and organized groups, and new efforts to mobilize individual citizens.

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 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?

Perhaps it is better to give than to receive, but exactly how much giving ought one to engage in and to whom or what? Recent ethical and philosophical developments such as the effective altruism movement suggest that relatively affluent individuals are ethically bound to donate a very large percentage of their resources to worthy causes-for example, saving as many lives as they possibly can, wherever in the world those lives may be. And charitable giving or philanthropy is not only a matter of individual giving, but also of giving by foundations, corporations, non-profits, non-governmental and various governmental agencies, and other organizational entities that play a very significant role in the modern world. How, for example, does an institution like the University of Chicago engage in and justify its philanthropic activities? Can one generalize about the various rationales for philanthropy, whether individual or institutional? Why do individuals or organizations engage in philanthropy, and do they do so well or badly, for good reasons, bad reasons, or no coherent reasons? This course will afford a broad, critical philosophical and historical overview of philanthropy, examining its various contexts and justifications, and contrasting charitable giving with other ethical demands, particularly the demands of justice. How do charity and justice relate to each other? Would charity even be needed in a fully just world? (A)

What is suffering, and how do we respond to it in a just way? This course explores the construction and circulation of understandings of suffering and justice through aesthetic representation, academic discourses, non-governmental organizations, and the law. We will consider how local and transnational contexts shape understandings of and responses to suffering, both historically and in the present. We will do so by attending to specific forms of suffering and their definitions (including trauma, corporeal violence, colonialism, and economic exploitation) and attempts to respond to these forms of suffering (through, for instance, human rights advocacy, humanitarianism, restorative justice, and revolutionary politics).

This course explores the history of American military power from the Spanish-American War to the end of the 1980s, focusing on the social, cultural, racial, and human rights aspects of the U.S. military and soldiering in the 20th century. This course will only lightly discuss military strategy and tactic, and instead focus on the broader array of issues which stem from American wars. The course will cover topics such as American military occupations, the desegregation of the Armed Forces, military justice and war crimes, and the rise (and fall) of human rights in American imaginations of war. We will be concerned with questions such as the relationship of the military to state-building in the U.S. and abroad, war as a state-making and race-making mechanism, and the importance of human rights and justice within imaginations of American military power. This course seeks to understand how war and peace shaped the history of the United States in the twentieth century, and the role of grassroots actors in defining the nature of war.

This course prepares students to relate the academic study of human rights to human rights practice. It will provide training in human rights monitoring, analysis, documentation (including the use of photography and videography), the use of public information and records, intervention and capacity building, trauma informed research, effective storytelling in human rights advocacy, effective interview techniques, stakeholder mapping, statistical analysis in R, mapping technologies and GIS. Importantly, this course will also address the 'ethics' side of field work, including principles of do no harm as well as self-care, which is so critical to human rights work.

The right to health is enshrined in over 130 national constitutions and many international treaties. Going beyond a right to health care, the right to health encompasses freedoms, such as privacy and informed consent, and other kinds of entitlements, like the right to accurate health information. This course will critically review the global state of the right to health in the age of pandemics and artificial intelligence (AI), examining normative developments, judicial opinions, research, and case studies from advocates worldwide. The course will consider the advantages and limitations of rights-based approaches to combating and preparing for pandemics, including COVID-19, and leveraging AI technologies for public health, such as large language models and other clinical decision support tools. The course will take stock of the human right to health as we stand at the convergence of dramatic advances in health technologies and unique vulnerabilities in the face of global pandemics.

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.

This two-quarter long course exists to support 4th year students who are on the practice intensive capstone track. Students will meet every other week to plan and receive help executing their projects from inception to completion. At every step, student will receive feedback from their peers and from the Director of Practice. The workshop will also likely involve training, including trauma informed research methodology, media strategy, and other topics as relevant. This course is 0 credits in Autumn Quarter and 100 credits in Winter Quarter.

Climate injustice includes the disproportionate effects of climate change on people who benefit little from the activities that cause it, generally the poor, people of color, and people marginalized in other ways. Given the complex economic, physical, social, and political realities of climate change, what might climate justice entail? This course explores this complex question through an examination of classical and contemporary theories of justice; the gendered, colonial, and racial dimensions of climate change; and climate justice movements.

In an era in which disruptive technologies have hijacked our consciousness and computer code has woven itself into the fabric of our existence, the lines between the virtual and the physical are increasingly blurred, and the nature of human existence itself increasingly uncertain. Digitizing Human Rights invites you to ponder, question, and even reshape the future of the species. We'll consider digital surveillance, data consent, access to tech, online agency, algorithmic bias and the future of artificial intelligence, among other topics. Drawing on cross-disciplinary perspectives, the course aims to illuminate the often misunderstood aspects of the digital age with the goal of creating an annotated digital document to serve as a blueprint for steering humanity towards a more equitable and just -- and perhaps a more secure -- future. Annotations will draw on a broad array of philosophical traditions and contextualize current issues and debates. We will also problematize the document itself to build into our work a consideration of the digital form through which we are thinking and representing claims about humanity, morality, truth, and justice, for example, that are entailed in the project of "human rights." The class will meet both in small groups and the larger seminar to refine the provisions and annotations, review progress, and shape the document as a whole.

This course will examine the role played by Marxist revolutions, revolutionary movements, and the right-wing dictatorships that have opposed them in shaping Latin American societies and political cultures since the end of World War II. Themes examined will include the relationship among Marxism, revolution, and nation building; the importance of charismatic leaders and icons; the popular authenticity and social content of Latin American revolutions; the role of foreign influences and interventions; the links between revolution and dictatorship; and the lasting legacies of political violence and military rule. Countries examined will include Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mexico. Assignments: Weekly reading, a midterm exam or paper, a final paper, participation in discussion, and weekly responses or quizzes.

The origins of game theory in social science reach back to the arms race at the height of the cold war. Since then, its applications have expanded, to include regime change, civil war conduct, and dealing with legacies of violations of human rights in the form of transitional justice. Recognizing the importance of this method in studying human rights and the proliferation of research in this area, this class will introduce human rights majors to the toolkit of game theory. Game theory analyzes strategic interactions between groups and individuals in an attempt to explain and predict how they behave “in equilibrium.” We will cover several equilibrium concepts, including the Nash Equilibrium and the Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium.

This course familiarizes students with the perspectives, debates, and attitudes that characterize the contemporary field of postcolonial theory, with critical attention to how its interdisciplinary formation contributes to reading literary works. What are the claims made on behalf of literary texts in orienting us to other lives and possibilities, and in registering the experiences of displacement under global capitalism? To better answer these questions, we read recent scholarship that engages the field in conversations around gender, affect, climate change, and democracy, to think about the impulses that animate the field, and to sketch new directions. We survey the trajectories and self-criticisms within the field, looking at canonical critics (Fanon, Said, Bhabha, Spivak), as well as reading a range of literary and cinematic works by writers like Jean Rhys, E.M. Forster, Mahasweta Devi, Derek Walcott, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie). (20th/21st)

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.

The US Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization has sharpened our awareness of the perils that besiege our reproductive futures. This course offers a deep dive into comparative reproductive justice theory and practice rooted both in unique cultural particularities and in globally resonant issues and challenges. While exposing students to the foundational texts shaping the reproductive justice movement, the course shall engage critically with the possibilities and limitations of a rights based framework and the challenges and liberatory potential of a justice based approach to reproductive decision-making. Drawing from literature and media from across the world, the course shall provide global perspectives on issues as varied as contraception, assisted reproductive technology, mass sterilization, and family leave, along with scholarship and resources from the US. While engaging critically with theory, the course shall also provide practitioners' perspectives through guest lectures by ethnographers, lawyers, and healthcare professionals working in the field. This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors.

This course is concerned with the theory and the historical evolution of the modern human rights regime. It discusses the emergence of a modern “human rights” culture as a product of the formation and expansion of the system of nation-states and the concurrent rise of value-driven social mobilizations. It proceeds to discuss human rights in two prevailing modalities. First, it explores rights as protection of the body and personhood and the modern, Western notion of individualism. Second, it inquires into rights as they affect groups (e.g., ethnicities and, potentially, transnational corporations) or states.

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.

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?" (A) (I)

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.

Abortion is a complex and fraught topic. Morally, a very wide range of individual, familial, and social concerns converge upon it. Politically, longstanding controversies have been given new salience and urgency by the Dobbs decision and the ongoing moves by state legislatures to restrict access to abortion. In terms of moral philosophy, deep issues in ethics merge with equally deep questions about the nature of life, action, and the body. In terms of political philosophy, basic questions are raised about the relationship of religious and moral beliefs to the criminal law of a liberal state. We will seek to understand the topic in all of this complexity. Our approach will be thoroughly intra- and inter-disciplinary, drawing not only on our separate areas of philosophical expertise but on the contributions of a series of guest in law, history, and medicine. (A)

4th year students writing a BA Essay in Human Rights must enroll in this two-quarter long sequence. Students will meet every other week to workshop and receive feedback on their BA essay theses from their peers and the Director of Practice. The Workshop will likely inbvolve training, including trauma informed research methodology, and other topics as relevant. This course is 0 credits in Autumna Quarter and 100 credits in Winter Quarter.   (Those writing a joint BA with another major may petition to satisfy this requirement with the BA Essay Workshop of their other major.)

The international human rights regime took form in the shadow of the atom bomb and WWII, a historical juncture, which for many marked the limits of techno-scientific rationality and progress. Utopian narratives of inevitable, technologically-driven social and economic progress nonetheless remain a cornerstone of American political and cultural imaginaries. In this course, we will draw on anthropology, law, and allied disciplines to explore the ambiguous intersections of technological innovation and human rights. Through a series of case studies, the course will consider how new technologies and their allied knowledge practices call into question the foundational categories of human rights law, complicating understandings of the individual, person hood, family, and life. The course will further examine how emerging developments in biotechnology, information technology, robotics, and AI variously enhance and undermine the substantive protections of human rights, including the rights to health, privacy, freedom of expression, security, and indigenous knowledge. Finally, we will consider how human rights norms and institutions can be mobilized to inform and constrain the design and application of potentially threatening new technologies.

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 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.

Religion played a crucial, but often overlooked, role in the development of post-World War II conceptions of human rights, providing principles and ideas that continue to influence contemporary human rights debates in the fields of law, public policy, and international relations. This no-prior-knowledge-necessary course explores the complex, sometimes fraught, relationship between religion and human rights from World War II to the present. We will begin by juxtaposing the role religious ideas played in the drafting of core post-war human rights documents (e.g. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, etc.) with the decision by drafters to omit direct references to the divine or the beliefs of specific religious communities. Using case study analysis and close reading of primary religious texts, scholarly commentary, and historical accounts, we will examine the ways in which individuals and groups from multiple religious (and non-religious) traditions both apply and push back against existing human rights norms. Throughout the course we will discuss the role religion might play in debates surrounding emerging, but still contentious, conceptions of human rights. This includes: universal healthcare, LGBTQIA+ rights, ever more complex manifestations of religious freedom, as well as whether human rights as conceived of in the mid-20th Century can be reconciled with decolonial and post-colonial perspectives.

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.

This two-quarter-long course exists to support 4th-year students who are on the practice-intensive capstone track. Students will meet every other week to plan and receive help executing their projects from inception to completion. At every step, students will receive feedback from their peers and from the Director of Practice. The workshop will also likely involve training, including trauma-informed research methodology, media strategy, and other topics as relevant. This course is 0 credits in Autumn Quarter and 100 credits in Winter Quarter.

How does race shape what we think about what is right and wrong, just and unjust? How about religion? Is "justice" a universal idea that stretches across social groups, or do our experiences as members of a religious and/or racial group have fundamentally affect our understanding(s) of justice? We'll begin by examining works by Aristotle, King, Rawls, and Nussbaum, asking what each theorist thinks justice entails and why. Along the way, we'll ask how stated and suppressed understandings of both "race" and "religion" inform their theories, as well as complicate and challenge them. Then we'll set these theories of justice in conversation with works by Francisco de Vitoria, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Cornel West, Traci C. West, and the Movement for Black Lives, each of which offers a protest against injustice in which "race" and "religion" play a prominent role. No previous knowledge required.

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.

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.

This course is an introduction to the field of women, gender, and Islam. We will examine the literature on Islamic legal, historical, Quranic and sacred textual constructs of women as well as critically explore the lived realities and experiences of Muslim women living in Muslim-majority societies and in the west. In centering the work of Muslim feminist scholars, students will gain an understanding of the contemporary debates around women's rights, sexuality, roles, responsibilities and gender relations in the context of Islamic law and the hadith literature. The discursive constructions and social realities of Muslim women are critically examined through historic and literary representations, ethnographic accounts, human rights discourses, sexual politics and secular and Islamic feminism(s). Moreover, this course situates Muslim women as complex, multidimensional actors engaged in knowledge production and political and feminist struggles, as opposed to the oppressed, victim-centered images that have regained currency in the representation of Muslim women in the post 9/11 era.

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.