Human Rights [REDACTED]

Over the last decade, posters announcing “Refugees Welcome Here” have appeared across the American landscape. What does the particular figure of the refugee tell us about the status of human rights in the twenty-first century? In other words, what are human rights and why do we care about them? Who gets to be a human and who doesn’t? This course examines the logic behind both the dispensation and withholding of human rights through literary texts across genres (novels, short stories, and graphic novels) and political theory across global sites like Kashmir, Palestine, Guantánamo, and Manus Island. The course queries the role of empathy, citizenship, the category of the human, and protection from torture, genocide, and extralegal violence in representation by studying key figures such as the refugee, the undocumented migrant, the prisoner, and the animal.  

Select Texts:

Bessie Head, Maru

Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost

Mirza Waheed, The Collaborator

Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But the Mountains

Jerome Tubiano, Guantánamo Kid