11320

HR / LIT 218 Free Speech

Thomas Keenan

. T . Th .

10:30 - 11:50 am

HDR 302

HUM

Cross-listed: Human Rights Program (core course) An introduction to the intersections between literature and human rights, from the Greeks to the French Revolution, Salman Rushdie, hate speech and censorship on the Internet. The course will examine the ways in which rights, language, and public space have been linked together in ideas about democracy. What is 'freedom of speech'? Is there a right to say anything? We will investigate who has had this right, where it has come from, and what it has had to do with literature. Why have poetry and fiction always been privileged examples of freedom and its defense? What powers does speech have, who has the power to speak, and for what? Is an encounter with the fact of language, which belongs to no one and can be appropriated by anyone, at the heart of democracy? In asking about the status of the speaking human subject, we will ask about the ways in which the subject of rights, and indeed the thought of human rights itself, derives from a 'literary' experience. These questions will be examined, if not answered, across a variety of literary, philosophical, legal and political texts, including case studies and readings in contemporary critical and legal theory (Foucault, Derrida, Butler, Spivak, Fish, Agamben). The class will take place jointly, via video link, with a seminar at Smolny College in St. Petersburg, Russia.

11425

ANTH / HR 233 Problems in Human Rights

John Ryle

M . W . .

12:00 -1:20 pm

OLIN 303

SSCI/DIFF

(Core course) This course approaches a set of practical and ethical human rights issues through the study of historical and contemporary campaigns, starting with the British anti-slavery movement of the 18th and 19th centuries. The emphasis is on practical questions of strategy and organization and the problems that arise from these. What were the challenges that early campaigners faced? How did they resolve them?  What alliances of interest did they confront? And what coalitions did they form to combat them? The course also considers how human rights campaigners have engaged with - and been part of - wider political, religious and economic changes. It examines the negotiations and compromises that led to a key event in the twentieth-century human rights history: the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Has the subsequent success of the human rights movement - particularly the expansion of international human rights legislation - changed its character?  The course examines the landmine ban campaign, the campaign against female genital cutting and the campaign against child soldiers - and considers the ideological challenges these issues present to the international human rights regime. When, if ever, are indigenous values more important than universal principles? What is the relation of human rights to religious values? Is human rights itself a quasi-religious belief system? Finally the course considers some contemporary challenges facing the human rights movement: the return of slavery and slave-like practices and the question of genocide in Darfur, in particular the role of the International Criminal Court. 

11577

HR 240 Observation and Description

Gilles Peress

. . W Th .

12:00-1:20 pm

HEG 200

HUM

Cross-listed: Art History, Human Rights (Core Course) We will study the observation and description of reality as a fundamental and daunting problem for human rights. Pain, violence, victimization, and injustice have long been a part of human reality.  Can we change, or are we doomed to repeat ourselves and kill and torture one another until the end of time?  The answer is not obvious. But one thing is certain: as long as we stay in the cave, in obscurity, and only look at shadows, we are not going to resolve this conundrum. Going into the world, trying to look at it and describe it, is the only way for us to escape that cavern of ideology, of disempowering shadows and ghosts. And while there is no such a thing as truth or objectivity, this process of trying to understand what we see, how we see it and how to describe it, brings us closer to a resolution -- by action -- of this fundamental question. In order to reach the point of rawness where we reformulate for ourselves what observation and description are, we must escape the predicament and predictability of known methods and forms.  We need to position ourselves in a no-man’s land, beyond traditional specializations in knowledge and practice. In this seminar, we are out to re-appropriate reality, to get at perception before it has been shaped as expression, to see images in the heart and eye before they harden as categories, styles, definitions -- and if it is possible to do so, to reconcile the layers of meanings and to pull from all these contradictions some organized process, where the documentary act begins.  We will focus on visual awareness, not as an illustration of ideas, but as a seed for ideas in themselves. We will try, through examples and assignments, to investigate how non-professionals can use not only current technologies but also new visual attitudes, so that reports and communications can escape their usual dreariness, so that human rights reporting can be formalized in such a way as to escape its own ghetto and be made attractive, visually and emotionally engaging to the largest possible audience.

11169

ARTH 289 Rights and the Image

Susan Merriam

M . W . .

12:00 -1:20 pm

OLIN 102

AART

(Core course – see Art History section for description.)

11476

HR 328 Critical Theory & Human Rights

Olivia Custer

. T . . .

1:30 -3:50 pm

OLIN 308

HUM/DIFF

Who has human rights? This course will examine the philosophical grounds, and consequences, of different answers to this question. What is it to be human? Who can be a bearer of rights? What is the difference between having rights and not having them? What is it to be a 'who'? Although the course will focus on reading theoretical work and concentrate on the philosophical issues, one of its aims will be to dispel any temptation to consider that the question 'who has human rights?' must, or indeed can, be heard as either a purely theoretically question or a simply empirical one. Instead it will aim to give students a framework to consider the way new answers to the question appear daily through discourses and practices in which the conceptual and the empirical condition one another. Readings will be drawn from the works of Giorgio Agamben, Etienne Balibar, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Rene Descartes, Lynn Hunt, Immanuel Kant, Claude Lefort, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Ranciere, Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Slavoj Zizek and others.

11500

HR 360 Child Survival

Helen Epstein

. . W . .

1:30 -3:50 pm

OLIN 205

SSCI/DIFF

Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies In Western countries, child deaths are rare, except in cases of severe congenital abnormality and freak accidents.  However, in Africa, Asia and Latin America some nine million children under five die annually, the vast majority from causes that cost pennies to prevent or cure. Why are child death rates still so high?  And what is the international community doing about this calamity?  This issue is timely because 2015 is the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, set by the UN in 2000.  The fourth of these Goals calls for a 60% decline in child mortality in 68 developing countries compared to 1990 levels, and billions of dollars are now being spent annually by government aid agencies and foundations on programs aimed at meeting it. This course will describe efforts past and present by governments, health agencies and foundations to prevent child deaths around the world, and explore why some efforts have been more successful than others. The importance of prevailing social attitudes towards women and children, as well as the political and economic imperatives that drive government action, will be emphasized.

11412

ANTH 273 Anthropology of Mass Incarceration

Jed Tucker

. T . Th .

2:30 -3:50 pm

OLIN 202

SSCI

11266

ANTH 343 Middle Eastern Modernities

Jeffrey Jurgens

. . . . F

9:30 - 11:50 am

OLIN 202

SSCI/DIFF

11432

CLAS / LIT 230 “Like Strangers in our Own City”: Life and Literature in the Late Roman Republic

Benjamin Stevens

. T . . . . . . Th .

2:30 -3:50 pm 2:30 -4:50 pm

OLINLC 210

11224

ECON 265 Community Based Development

Sanjaya DeSilva

. T . Th .

4:00 -5:20 pm

OLIN 205

SSCI/DIFF

11601

SOC / HIST 214 Contemporary American Immigration

Joel Perlmann

. T. Th  .

4:00 – 5:20 pm

OLIN  202

SSCI/DIFF

11421

HIST 229 Confucianism: Humanity, Rites, and Rights

Robert Culp

M . W . .

10:30 - 11:50 am

OLIN 308

HIST/DIFF

11020	HIST 237 The Sixties	Mark Lytle	. T . . .	2:30 -3:50 pm	OLIN 205	HIST
			M . . . .	7:00 - 10:00 pm	OLIN 205	HIST

11582

HIST 2701 The Holocaust, 1933-1945

Cecile Kuznitz

. T . Th .

10:30 -11:50 am

HEG 200

HIST/DIFF

11416

HIST 3142 Violence in the Early Americas

Christian Crouch

. . . Th .

9:30 - 11:50 am

OLIN 309

HIST/DIFF

11129

LIT 2007 Imagining Environment in East Asia

Hoyt Long

. T . Th .

10:30 - 11:50 am

OLIN 201

FLLC/DIFF

11035

LIT 2024 Sentimental Traditions in American Literature and Culture

Charles Walls

. T . Th .

1:00 -2:20 pm

HEG 300

ELIT

11082

LIT 3035 The Frankfurt School

Florian Becker

. T . . .

4:00 -6:20 pm

OLINLC 118

ELIT

11156

LIT 3135 A Partial History of Dismemberment

Lianne Habinek

. . W . F

12:00 -1:20 pm

OLIN 107

ELIT

11362

LIT 328 Ideology and Politics in Modern Literature

Justus Rosenberg

. T . . .

10:30 - 12:50 pm

OLIN 302

ELIT

11105

LIT 3306 Scholasticism vs. Humanism

Karen Sullivan

. . . . F

1:30 -3:50 pm

OLINLC 120

ELIT

11036

PS 104 International Relations

Sanjib Baruah

M . W . .

10:30 - 11:50 am

OLIN 204

SSCI

11372

PS 145 Human Rights in Global Politics

Omar Encarnacion

M . W . .

3:00 -4:20 pm

OLIN 201

SSCI

11049

PS 227 Europe and the World: International Relations of West European States

Elaine Thomas

. T . Th .

2:30 -3:50 pm

OLIN 301

SSCI

11338

PS 380 Political & Legal Thinking

Roger Berkowitz

M . . . .

4:30 -6:50 pm

OLIN 204

HUM

11011

SOC 304 Modern Sociological Theory

Michael Donnelly

M . W . .

1:30 – 2:50 pm

OLINLC 206

SSCI

11012

SOC 338 Welfare States in Comparative Perspective

Michael Donnelly

. T . . .

1:30 -3:50 pm

ALBEE 106

SSCI

11572

SST 298 Exiles, Refugees, and Survivors: The Exodus from Hitler’s Germany

David Kettler

. . . Th .

4:00 -6:20 pm

OLIN 306

SSCI

11447

THTR 212 Writing Political Theater

Chiori Miyagawa

. . . Th .

1:30 -3:50 pm

FISHER

PART