Fall 2008 Courses

English 125-01: Studies in Literature: Human Rights in the Humanities (Dawes)

M/W/F 10:50-11:50am CARN 105

This course is an introduction to the study of human rights by way of the arts and humanities. We will seek to better understand the contemporary norms and practices of human rights by examining its deep historical contexts, and by considering the philosophical and religious debates that continue to shape human rights theory and practice. We will also examine theories trauma and torture, personal accounts of human rights and humanitarian fieldwork, representational ethics, and studies of human rights in film and media. We will scrutinize relevant literary texts as works of art, as case studies in human rights, and as models for understanding how words can change the world, whether in the form of human rights reports and newspaper accounts or of poems and novels. In other words, we will seek to better understand how spectators of suffering develop (or fail to develop) empathy for distant persons or for persons considered alien by also examining how they can so palpably feel for the dreams, desires, and dignity of fictional persons. In The Defense of Poesy Sir Philip Sidney describes the tyrant, Alexander Pheraeus, "from whose eyes a tragedy well-made and represented drew abundance of tears; who without all pity had murdered infinite numbers, and some of his own blood, so as he that was not ashamed to make matters for tragedies, yet could not resist the sweet violence of a tragedy." What is the line that separates those who are merely moved from those who are moved to act? When does the story become real enough to change you? Authors may include Micheline Ishay, Paul Gordon Lauren, Samantha Power, Elaine Scarry, Jacobo Timerman, Tracy Kidder, Lynn Hunt, Alan Dershowitz, J. M. Coetzee, Michael Ondaatje, Kenneth Cain, Mary Ann Glendon, Ishmael Beah, Alison Boden, and Kazuo Ishiguro.

*First Year Course only; first day attendance required.*

Fall 2008 Course Listings