Human Rights During Unsettled Times

Are human rights expanding or contracting worldwide? In this course, we trace the global spread of human rights rhetoric over time and compare it to human rights practices.

We also focus on current challenges to human rights respecting gender relations, citizenship, and violence, which are at the heart of contemporary international conflicts.

In this endeavor, we examine macro-level temporal trends in democratic versus authoritarian governance, in addition to micro-level factors like domestic violence, childbearing, and cultural identity.

The course aims to inform students of the strengths and challenges of human rights and to prepare them to productively debate the key human rights issues of our time.