Core courses: *******************************************************************************************************************************************************

11540

HR 101 Introduction to Human Rights

Nadia Latif

. T . Th .

11:50 - 1:10 pm

RKC 115

HUM/DIFF

Cross-listed: GIS An intensive introduction to contemporary discussions of human rights in a broad context. The course mixes a basic historical and theoretical investigation of these contested categories, 'human' and 'right,' with some difficult examples of the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions of claims made in these terms. What are humans and what count as rights, if any? We will ask about the foundations of rights claims; about legal, political, non-violent and violent ways of advancing, defending and enforcing them; about the documents and institutions of the human rights movement; and about the questionable 'reality' of human rights in our world. Is there such a thing as 'our' world? The answers are not obvious. They are most complicated when we are talking, as we will for most of the semester, about torture (from the ancient world to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib), so-called humanitarian intervention (from Somalia and Bosnia to Iraq and Darfur), truth commissions and war crimes tribunals (Milosevic, Hussein, South Africa, Peru), testimony and information (from Shoah to the CNN effect) and the challenges to human rights orthodoxy posed by terrorism and the wars against it. Using The Face of Human Rights (Walter Kalin) as our primary text, along with work in philosophy, history, literature, politics, and with the contemporary news flow, we will examine some tricky cases and troubled places, among them our own. This course addresses Rethinking Difference by telling the story of people excluded from access to rights because they are "different" and how they have managed (if they have) to challenge that exclusion by making demands for justice. It also tries to understand this dynamic of difference and universality, exclusion and transformation, theoretically.  Class size: 22

11161

PS 145 Human Rights in Global Politics

Omar Encarnacion

M . W . .

3:10 - 4:30 pm

OLIN 201

SSCI

Cross-listed: Global & Int’l Studies This course aims to familiarize students with the principal historical and sociological explanations behind the rise of human rights, its principal actors, institutions and legal frameworks, and the main international, regional and national settings in which the debates and practices of human rights take place. The course is divided into three core sections. The first explores the origins of the notion of human rights, taking into consideration the importance of such historical developments as the atrocities of World War II, especially those committed by Germany's Nazi regime, and sociological explanations derived from theories of modernization and globalization and the main actors and institutions in the human rights arena, from the basic legal framework of human rights standards (e.g., the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention, to name a few), to the role of major international players, such as the United States and the European Community, to powerful non-governmental actors such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and the Center for Transitional Justice. The second part examines human rights activism in action, such as humanitarian interventions against genocide and the process of transitional justice in nations exiting political regimes notorious for their human rights abuses. The third and final section examines the dominant debates within the human rights movement, such as the20rejection of the expansive “Western” view of human rights in many parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and the increasing scrutiny being paid to how mature democracies, like the United States, often fail to conform to internationally-accepted human rights norms. Class size: 22

11656

HR 235 Dignity and Human Rights Traditions

Roger Berkowitz

. . W . . . . . . F

3:10 -4:30 pm 1:30 - 2:50 pm

OLIN 205 OLIN 204

HUM/DIFF

Cross-listed: Political Studies, Philosophy We live at a time when the claim to human rights is both taken for granted and regularly disregarded. One reason for the disconnect between the reality and the ideal of human rights is that human rights have never been given a secure philosophical foundation. Indeed, many have argued that absent a religiously grounded faith in human dignity, there is no legal ground for human rights. Might it be that human rights are simply well-meaning aspirations without legal or philosophical foundation? And what is dignity anyway? Ought we to abandon talk about dignity and admit that human rights are groundless? Against this view, human rights advocates, international lawyers, and constitutional judges continue to speak of dignity as the core value of the international legal system. Indeed, lawyers in Germany and South Africa are developing a "dignity jurisprudence" that might guarantee human rights on the foundation of human dignity. Is it possible, therefore, to develop a secular and legally meaningful idea of dignity that can offer a ground for human rights? This class explores both the modern challenge to dignity and human rights as well as attempts to resuscitate a new and more coherent secular ideal of dignity as a legally valid guarantee of human rights. In addition to texts including Hannah Arendt's book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, we read legal cases, and documents from international law. Class size: 22

11194

ANTH 261 Anthropology of Violence and Suffering

Laura Kunreuther

M . W . .

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLIN 205

HUM/DIFF

Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies, Human Rights, Global & Int’l Studies, Science, Technology & Society Why do acts of violence continue to grow in the ‘modern’ world? In what ways has violence become naturalized in the contemporary world? In this course, we will consider how acts of violence challenge and support modern ideas of humanity, raising important questions about what it means to be human today. These questions lie at the heart of anthropological thinking and also structure contemporary discussions of human rights. Anthropology’s commitment to “local culture” and cultural diversity has meant that anthropologists often position themselves in critical opposition to “universal values,” which have been used to address various forms of violence in the contemporary world. The course will approach different forms of violence, including ethnic and communal conflicts, colonial education, torture and its individualizing effects, acts of terror and institutionalized fear, and rituals of bodily pain that mark individuals’ inclusion or exclusion from a social group. The course is organized around three central concerns. First, we will discuss violence as a means of producing and consolidating social and political power, and exerting political control. Second, we will look at forms of violence that have generated questions about “universal rights” of humanity versus culturally specific practices, such as widow burning in India and female genital mutilation in postcolonial Africa. In these examples, we explore gendered dimensions in the experience of violence among perpetrators, victims, and survivors. Finally, we will look at the ways human rights institutions have sought to address the profundity of human suffering and pain, and ask in what ways have they succeeded and/or failed. Readings will range from theoretical texts, anthropological ethnographies, as well as popular representations of violence in the media and film. This course fulfills a core class requirement for the Human Rights program. Class size: 22

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11623

HR 225 1945, or the End of Wars

Ian Buruma

M . W . .

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLIN 303

HIST/DIFF

How do countries recover from destruction and catastrophe? This is the topic of a course on the immediate postwar period in 1945. Parallels will be drawn to current events, such as the efforts in Iraq to rebuild a shattered nation, but by concentrating on 1945 the students will get the chance to study many countries in a comparative manner. Topics will range from the human urge to wreak revenge on former enemies, and the use of war crime tribunals to channel and contain such emotions, to such idealistic ventures as the founding of the United Nations and the establishment of an international human rights regime. Ideals of the immediate postwar, about human rights and social democracy, are now under increasing strain, to the point of cracking apart, and it is important to understand where they came from. Since the focus of this course will be global, it will also include the anti-colonial movements in Asia, the building or possibly the restoration of democratic institutions in Germany and Japan, the civil wars in Greece and China. The lessons to be drawn from this subject, in terms of politics, society and culture, have huge contemporary resonance, since they touch upon the hottest debates of our time: the use of war to change political institutions, the role of culture in democracy, the universalist assumptions about human rights. Class size: 18

11622

HR 231 From Retribution to Justice

Gilles Peress

. T . . .

1:30 - 3:50 pm

RKC 122

HUM

This course, which will have a special focus on the current and past situation in the Middle East, will examine a variety of texts -- starting with the Old Testament (with some of its powerful stories and parables), through the emergence of basic laws concerning the conduct of war during the Middle Ages (the "Warrior's Honor"), up to the 19th and 20th century legal attempts to elaborate different codes of conduct in war and conflict -- in order to map out the very slow transition from the concept of vengeance and the law of the Talion (an-eye-for-an-eye) based on retribution, to the concept of justice in war, and particularly of international justice, which establishes a sovereignty above all others, and which seeks to provide a path out of the endless blood cycles based on the "Melian" notion of might as right. The seminar will investigate the history of the ideas of justice and vengeance, and the political and legal emergence of "international criminal justice," with a variety of cases and examples drawn from the conflicts in Israel-Palestine. Class size: 15

11618

HR 303 Research in Human Rights

Thomas Keenan

M . . . .

1:30 - 3:50 pm

RKC 102

HUM

What is it to do research, academic or otherwise, in the field of human rights? What are the relevant methods, and tools? How do the political and ethical considerations central to the discourse of human rights enter into the actual conduct of research? The seminar, required for junior Human Rights majors, will explore a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the field, reading a variety of examples across an interdisciplinary perspective. Readings include texts in continental philosophy, political and social theory, literary and cultural studies, international law, media and visual culture, gender and identity research, documentary and testimony, quantitative analysis including GIS and statistical data, oral and archival history, among others, and many case studies in actual human rights reporting. The seminar is required for Juniors in Human Rights, and is also open to others if there is space. Class size: 20

11672

HR 328 Theories of Human Rights

Olivia Custer

. T . . .

1:30 - 3:50 pm

RKC 115

HUM

Cross-listed: Philosophy This course will start from Friedrich Nietzsche's suspicions that compassion for the suffering and talk of equality harbor a project not to promote life, but to destroy it. To help us reflect on how we might extend what we learn from Nietzsche to the contemporary scene, we will be looking to two thinkers who precede us this attempt: Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Both of them follow Nietzsche, to a certain extent, when they take on the task of tracking the methods and the sites of the violence involved in producing the figure of the human being, bearer of human rights. Nevertheless Derrida and Foucault have their quarrels and they do offer diverging diagnostics of the predicament of those who call themselves human today. We will look at each of these as we attempt to understand who it is exactly we would mourn if man were indeed, as Foucault suggested, a figure in the sand shortly to be washed out by the sea, and what possibilities there might still be for affirming the survival of human rights. Our emphasis will be on acquiring the skills, and the ear, to ask a variant of Nietzsche's question: what is the value of the value of human rights? Focusing on close analysis, the readings will be almost exclusively drawn from the works of Nietzsche, Foucault and Derrida. Class size: 22

11661

HR 336 Indigenous Rights and Biohistory of the Amerindians

Marc van Roosmalen

. . . . F

1:30 - 3:50 pm

RKC 101

HIST

This course will examine the human history of the Amerindians, the original and legitimate native inhabitants of the Americas before 1491 A.D., and their near-complete disappearance. We will begin with some background on migration, settlement, and cultivation, with special attention to the fabrication in the Amazon Basin of highly fertile black earth (‘terra pert’), which allowed urban complexes sometimes counting over 100,000 people. Then we will ask what it was like, in the New World, at the time of Columbus? Who lived here and what passed through these people’s minds when European sails first appeared on the horizon? How did it happen that a few Spanish conquistadores led by Cortéz (and his herd of pigs) could in such a short period of time wipe out the millions of people living those days for the greater part in prosperous well-organized megacities in Mesoamerica – destroying highly sophisticated cultures such as the Mayas, the Olmec and other indigenous groups? How, shortly after, could a similar genocide and ethnic cleansing have taken place in the Andes (nowadays Peru) on the peoples of Tawantinsuyu, with Pedro Pizarro in the lead. And how did this happen again when, in the 16th and 17th century, European colonists or Pilgrims swarmed across the Dawnland of North America? The answer may be found in the fact that native AmerIndians, in sharp contrast to Europeans, never have domesticated husbandry other than Muscovy duck, lama’s and alpacas. Most understandably, they had no resistance (antibodies) whatsoever to the sort of bacterial and viral diseases hopping back and forth among Europeans in Europe. Equally lethal to them were human (in particular, child) diseases originating in medieval urban societies of western Europe, such as smallpox and measles. There is still academic dispute over this perspective, in particular among anthropologists, archaeologists, ecologists, historians and geographers, which we will explore. Wrapping up the course we will focus on the recent history of native AmerIndians in the Amazon and show that again history repeats itself, this time much more recently. Worse, as I will point out, it is still happening in contemporary Brazil, where AmerIndians are not considered citizens benefiting from general human rights under the Constitution.

11621

HR 340 Reproductive Health & Rights

Helen Epstein

. . . Th .

1:30 - 3:50 pm

RKC 200

SSCI/DIFF

This course will cover population growth and family planning, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, maternal mortality, gender violence, abortion, homosexuality and other issues. Most of the course will deal with policies and events in developing countries. Emphasis will be placed on how US funded reproductive health programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America have evolved over time in relation to historical events such as the Cold War, decolonization and the War on Terror, as well as changing attitudes to the family in the West. Class size: 15

11619

HR 412 Re-reading "The Family of Man"

Thomas Keenan

. . W . .

10:10 - 12:30 pm

CCS

AART

Ever since its inaugural exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955, the 503 photographs in "The Family of Man" have been a topic of fascination and debate, critique and enthusiasm. The seminar will explore the images and the debates in order to re-examine the exhibit as a sort of archive of the human rights imagination, and to investigate the powerful relation between contemporary human rights discourse and the photographic image. The exhibition can be seen as an effort to stage a visual parallel to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) adopted in 1948. The photos collected and shown in it attempt to establish a common visual standard for measuring right and wrong on a global scale. Most of the photos chosen serve this goal successfully, but what is seen in them, or what can be learned through them, is not only this. After the famous critiques of the exhibition's de-historicizing universalism by Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, among others, and after numerous attempts to re-exhibit and re-frame the photographs in exhibitions and counter-exhibitions, what remains striking is how little attention has been paid to reading and interpreting the images themselves. We will focus on producing detailed research and analysis of some images from the show, as part of a larger international project at a number of universities to re-evaluate the exhibition. Class size: 10

11192

ANTH 201 Gender and Inequalty in Latin America

Diana Brown

M . W . .

1:30 - 2:50 pm

OLIN 204

SSCI/DIFF

11662

ANTH 332 Cultural Technologies of Memory

Laura Kunreuther

. . . . F

10:10 - 12:30 pm

OLIN 307

SSCI/DIFF

11133

ANTH 337 Cultural Politics of Animals

Yuka Suzuki

. . W . .

10:10 - 12:30 pm

OLIN 307

SSCI/DIFF

11303

CLAS 326 Afterlives of Antiquity: Posthumanism and its Classics

Benjamin Stevens Screenings:

M . W . . Su . . .

10:10 - 11:30 am 7:00 - 10:00 pm

RKC 200 OLIN 102

HUM/DIFF

11409

ECON 221 Economics of Developing Countries

Sanjaya DeSilva

. . W . F

1:30 - 2:50 pm

HEG 106

SSCI

11123

ECON 229 Statistics

Andrew Pearlman

M . W . .

8:30 - 9:50 am

OLIN 202

MATC

11127

ECON 260 Religion and Economics

Tamar Khitarishvili

M . W . .

3:10 - 4:30 pm

ALBEE 106

SSCI

11223

EUS 104 Colonial and Post-colonial Geographies

Jonathan Anjaria

. T . Th .

3:10 - 4:30 pm

HEG 102

SSCI

11563

FILM 352 Propaganda in Film

Ian Buruma

M . . . . Su . . .

1:30 - 4:30 pm 7:00 - 10:00 pm

OLIN 309 PRE 110

HUM

11177

HIST 102 Europe since 1815

Gennady Shkliarevsky

. T . Th .

3:10 - 4:30 pm

OLIN 203

HIST

11412

HIST 185 History of Modern Middle East

Jennifer Derr

. T . Th .

1:30 - 2:50 pm

OLIN 204

HIST/DIFF

11178

HIST 190 The Cold War: Enemy/Globalism

Gennady Shkliarevsky / Mark Lytle

M . W . .

1:30 - 2:50 pm

OLINLC 115

HIST

11670

HIST 2236 Decolonization and Postcolonial Africa

Priya Lal

M . W . .

1:30 - 2:50 pm

OLIN 307

HIST

11668

HIST 2306   Gender, Sexuality & Power in Modern China

Robert Culp

M . W . .

11:50  -  1:10 pm

HEG 102

HIST

11180

HIST 2701 The Holocaust, 1933-1945

Cecile Kuznitz

. T . Th .

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLIN 201

HIST/DIFF

11416

HIST 3107 Fugitives, Exile, Extradition

Tabetha Ewing

. T . . .

4:40 – 7:00 pm

OLIN 204

HIST/DIFF

11417

HIST 3132 The History of Urban Schooling In the U.S., 1790-2010

Ellen Lagemann

. T . . .

1:30 - 3:50 pm

OLIN 205

HIST

11419

HIST 3146 The Environment in History in the Middle East and Africa

Jennifer Derr

M . W . .

10:10 - 11:30 am

HEG 308

HIST

11190

HIST 340 The Politics of History

Robert Culp

. . W . .

1:00 - 3:20 pm

OLIN 305

HIST

11617

LIT / AFR 315 National Politics of the Soul: The Inner Life of a Nation in Kojo Laing's Novel, Search Sweet Country

Binyavanga Wainaina

M . W . .

3:10 - 4:30 pm

OLIN 107

ELIT

11532

PHIL 251 Ethical Theory

William Griffith

M . W . .

3:10 - 4:30 pm

ASP 302

HUM

11113

PHIL 263 The Philosophy of Race

Adam Rosen

. . W . F

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLINLC 115

HUM/DIFF

11107

PHIL 368 The New Genetics: Ethical, Legal and Social Issues

Daniel Berthold

. T . . .

1:30 - 3:50 pm

RKC 200

HUM

11168

PS 104 International Relations

Michelle Murray

M . W . .

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLIN 203

SSCI

11307

PS 222 Democracy in Latin America

Omar Encarnacion

M . W . .

11:50 - 1:10 pm

OLIN 301

11309

PS 224 Sex, Power & Politics

Verity Smith

. T . Th .

3:10 - 4:30 pm

OLIN 204

SSCI

11308

PS 251 Human Rights in Asia

Ken Haig

. T . Th .

3:10 - 4:30 pm

OLIN 201

SSCI

11224

PS 271 American Foreign Policy Traditions II

Walter Mead

. . W . F

11:50 - 1:10 pm

OLIN 204

HIST

11158

PS 274 Politics of Globalization

Sanjib Baruah

. . W . F

8:30 - 9:50 am

OLIN 101

SSCI

11313

PS 343 Civil Liberties and States of Emergency

Verity Smith

. . . . F

10:10 - 12:30 pm

OLIN 309

SSCI

11312

PS 349 The Nature of Power

Jonny Cristol

M . . . .

1:30 - 3:50 pm

OLIN 310

SSCI

11315

PS 368 Crusader America: Promoting Democracy Abroad

Omar Encarnacion

. T . . .

10:10 - 12:30 pm

OLIN 307

SSCI

11314

PS 370 Population Politics

Ken Haig Writing Lab:

. . W . . M . . . .

1:30 - 3:50 pm 1:30 - 2:30 pm

OLIN 309 OLIN 303

SSCI

11310

PS 373 Human Rights & the Environment

Monique Segarra

. . . Th .

10:10 - 12:30 pm

HEG 200

SSCI

11536

REL 332 Gandhi: Life, Philosophy, and the Strategies of Nonviolence

Richard Davis

. . W . .

1:30 - 3:50 pm

RKC 122

HUM

11186

SOC 214 Contemporary Immigration

Joel Perlmann

. T . Th .

4:40 - 6:00 pm

OLIN 202

SSCI

11105

SOC 239 Israeli Society

Yuval Elmelech

. T . Th .

10:10 - 11:30 am

OLIN 202

SSCI/DIFF

11104

SOC 261 Marxist Sociology

David Madden

M . W . .

3:10 - 4:30 pm

RKC 115

SSCI

11103

SOC 332 Seminar on Social Problems

Yuval Elmelech

. . W . .

10:10 - 12:30 pm

OLIN 306

SSCI/DIFF

11647

SST 255 Exile: Internal & External

Kati Marton

. T . . .

8:00 – 10:20 am

HDR 302

SSCI