• Part I: Human Rights and the Body in Law and Documentary Film
  • Week 1: Human Rights and the international Body Politic
  • Week 2: Comparative Human Rights Systems: Universalist vs. Cultural Relativist Perspectives on Human Rights
  • Week 3: Challenges to the Protection of International Human Rights
  • Week 4: Torture, Extra-Judicial Executions and Political Repression
  • Week 5: International Crimes and Punishment; Asylum and Persecution
  • Week 6: Women’s and Children’s Rights
  • Week 7: Violations of Human Rights in the U.S.
  • Week 8: Ethics, Medical Research and Human Rights
• Part II: Human Rights and the Body in the Humanities
  • Guide Questions for Weeks 9, 10 and 11: Human Rights and the Body in Literature and Fictional Film
  • Week 9: Race, Gender and Class
  • Week 10: Spring Break
  • Week 11: Class and Dystopias
  • Week 12: The Law and Human Rights
  • Week 13: Concluding Remarks-Postmodern Jurisprudences and Human Rights & the Body
  • Week 14 - 15: Final Presentations

Part I: Human Rights and the Body in Law and Documentary Film [top]

Week 1: Human Rights and the international Body Politic [top]

Guide Questions:

1. What are the philosophical, political and economic underpinnings of human rights?
2. How did the current normative framework of international human rights evolve? How was the concept of “human rights” institutionalized in Western political thought?
3. What is the difference between human rights and civil rights?
4. What is the implicit depiction of the “human body” in relation to “human rights” in these texts?
5. How does the image of the individual human body relate to the image of the “body politic” in these texts?

Suggested Texts:

Henry Steiner and Philip Alston, International Human Rights in Context. Law, Politics, Morals (Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 3-116.

Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 9-45; Steiner and Alston, pp. 256-328.

F. Newman and D. Weissbrodt, eds. International Human Rights: Law, Policy and Process, 2nd ed. (Anderson Publishing Co., 1996), Chapters 1 and 2.

Websites:

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights web site http://www.unhchr.ch

The Consortium for Health and Human Rights web site http://www.healthandhumanrights.org

Week 2: Comparative Human Rights Systems: Universalist vs. Cultural Relativist Perspectives on Human Rights [top]

Guide Questions:

1. Are “human rights” purely a western concept, or is it universal?
2. What is the concept of “human rights” in non-western traditions?
3. Is the concept of the “human body” the same in relation to these “human rights” in Western and nonwestern contexts?
4. What is the relationship between domestic constitutional law and international human rights law, and how are “human rights” and the “human body” configured in these?
5. What mechanisms exist nationally and internationally for enforcing human rights? How effective are they, based on particular test cases, such as the Soering and El Mozote cases?

Suggested Texts:

Abdullahi an-Naim (ed.), Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 1-102.

Henry Steiner and Philip Alston, International Human Rights in Context. Law, Politics, Morals (Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 166-255.

Michael J. Perry, “Are Human Rights Universal? The Relativist Challenge and Related Matters,” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 19, 3 (August 1997).

M. Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote (Vintage, 1993), pp. 175-278.

M. Hoyt, ‘The Mozote Massacre’ in The Columbia Journalism Review (Jan./Feb. 1993), pp. 31-35.

Soering v. U.K., in R.A. Lawson & H.G. Schermers, Leading Cases of the European Court of Human Rights (Ars Aequi Libri, 1997), pp. 306-328.

Documentary Film:

America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference, Martin Ostrow, PBS, 1994.

Week 3: Challenges to the Protection of International Human Rights [top]

Guide Questions:

1. What are the United Nations standards concerning the internationalization of human rights, and how is the international human body configured in relation to these rights?
2. What have been some past and contemporary challenges to the promotion and protection of international human rights, and how has the individual body, in relation to the national and international bodies politic, been envisaged in relation to these challenges?
3. What is the notion of “health” implied in the depictions of human rights and the human body?

Suggested Texts:

Henry Steiner and Philip Alston, International Human Rights in Context. Law, Politics, Morals (Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 347-455; 563-539.

Jonathan Mann, Lawrence Gostin, Sofia Gruskin, et. al., “Health and Human Rights,” Health and Human Rights, vol. 1, 1 (1994).

Virginia Leary, “The Right to Health in International Human Rights Law,” Health and Human Rights, vol. 1, 1 (1994).

Tom Farer, The Rise of the Inter-American Human Rights Regime: No Longer a Unicorn, Not Yet an Ox, vol. 19, 3 (1997).

George Andreopoulos, ed. Genocide: The Conceptual and Historical Dimensions (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 1-63.

Carlos S. Nino, Radical Evil on Trial (Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 3-104, 107-189.

Helen Fein, “Genocide by Attrition 1939-1993: The Warsaw Ghetto, Cambodia and Sudan,” Health and Human Rights, vol. 2, 2 (1997).

Week 4: Torture, Extra-Judicial Executions and Political Repression [top]

Proposals for Final Papers are Due

Guide Questions:

1. What is the definition of torture under international law, and what are the implicit depictions of the “healthy”/ “free” human body?
2. What is the difference between just punishment and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment?
3. What ethical issues arise when physicians, scientists or other medical personnel become involved in torture?
4. Taking a particular test case, what was the degree of state repression in the Soviet Gulag, based on existing documents? What ethnic and political criteria were involved in repressive measures? How was psychiatric repression configured in relation to bodily torture?

Suggested Texts:

Nigel Rodley, The Treatment of Prisoners Under International Law (Clarendon Press, 1987), Chapter 12. Ireland v. UK, in F. Newman and D. Weissbrodt, eds., 2nd ed. (Anderson Publishing Company, 1996), pp. 147-150; 155-165.

Convention Against Torture, in Twenty-five Human Rights Documents (Columbia University, 1994), pp. 71-79.

Askoy v. Turkey, in Leading Cases of the European Court of Human Rights, eds. R.A, Lawson & H.G. Schermers (Ars Aequi Libri, 1997), pp. 654-670.

Gordon and Marton, eds., “Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics, and the Case of Israel” Amnesty International, Prisoners of Conscience in the USSR: their Treatment and Conditions (1975, 1980), Chapter 2 E.

Stover & E.O. Nightingale, M.D., The Breaking of Bodies and Minds: Torture, Psychiatric Abuse, and the Health Professions (W.H. Freeman, 1985), Chapters 6 and 9.

Documentary Film:

Women Under Attack, Rights & Wrongs, Program 3, Eulogio L. Ortiz, Jr., Globalvision and WNET Thirteen, 1993.

Week 5: International Crimes and Punishment; Asylum and Persecution [top]

Guide Questions:

1. What is the legacy of the trials at Nuremberg?
2. What are the legal characterizations of war crimes; genocide and crimes against humanity; medical/forensic, legal, psychological and sociological factors? How is the international human body configured in relation to these?
3. When does rape constitute a war crime? How is the raced, classed and aged female body configured in relation to law?
4. How do international law and domestic law intersect and diverge, in their treatment of the refugee?
5. How do domestic violence and female genital mutilation form the basis for political asylum? How is the raced and classed female body depicted in these texts?

Suggested Texts:

F. Newman and D. Weissbrodt, eds., 2nd ed. (Anderson Publishing Company, 1996), Chapters 7 and 14.

Amnesty International, ‘Disappearances’: A Workbook (1981), pp. 75-118.

Amnesty International, ‘Disappearances’ and Political Killings: Human Rights Crisis of the 1990s. A Manual for Action (1994), pp. 84-107.

K.D. Askin, War Crimes Against Women (Martinus Nijhoff, 1997), pp. 49-95; 179-185; 298-361.

C. McKinnon, "Rape, Genocide and Women’s Human Rights," in Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ed. A. Stiglmayer (University of Nebraska Press, 1994), pp. 183-196.

Re. Fauziya Kazinga (Board of Immigration Appeals, June 1996).

Convention Against Torture: Tahir Hussain Khan v. Canada (Nov. 1994).

Pauline Kisoki v. Sweden (May 1996).

Week 6: Women’s and Children’s Rights [top]

Guide Questions:

1. Should women’s rights be created as a separate category?
2. How are women’s rights and bodies configured in relation to the rights and bodies of their children, and their spouses?
3. How are women’s and children’s bodies configured in relation to property?
4. Can women’s rights (and the imaging of their bodies) be separate from cultural constraints?
5. Should formal equality be the goal of women’s lobbying for rights protection?
6. What were the outcome and achievements of the Beijing Conference?
7. What is the North/South divide in the International Women’s Movement?

Suggested Readings:

Convention to the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women United Nations General Assembly Resolution 48/104 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women

Charlotte Bunch, “Women’s Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Revision of Human Rights,” 12 Human Rights Quarterly 486, 1982

Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin and Shelley Wright, “Feminist Approaches to International Law,” 85 American Journal of International Law 813, 1991, pp. 613-45.

“Women, Law and Property in the Developing World: An Overview,” Human Rights Quarterly, Johns Hopkins University, 1981

Joan Fitzpatrick, “The Use of International Human Rights Norms to Combat Violence Against Women,” from Human Rights of Women, ed. Rebecca J, Cook.

Theodore Meron, “Rape as a Crime Under International Humanitarian Law,” 87 American Journal of International Law 424 (1993).

I. Gunning, “Arrogant Perception, World-Travelling and Multicultural Feminism: The Case of Female Genital Surgeries,” 23 Columbia Human Rights Journal 189 (1991-92)

Karen Engle, “Female Subjects of Public International Law: Human Rights and the Exotic Other Female,” New England Law Review 26, 1992, pp. 1509-1526

Film:

Death and the Maiden, Roman Polanksi, dir., 1994.

Judgment at Nuremberg, Stanley Kramer, dir., 1961.

Week 7: Violations of Human Rights in the US [top]

Guide Questions:

1. Do violations of human rights occur in the imposition of the death penalty?
2. Do prison conditions violate international standards concerning human rights and the un-tortured human body?
3. Does the detention of alien minors, including children of asylum seekers, constitute a violation of human rights?
4. How does the Violence Against Women Act attempt to address the rights of the alien/foreign woman who has been sexually tortured or imprisoned, and those of her children? What is the implicit depiction of the alien female body and those of her children in VAWA?

Suggested Texts:

F. Newman and D. Weissbrodt, eds., 2nd ed. (Anderson Publishing Company, 1996), Chapter 13.

American Prosecutor’s Research Institute, The Many Faces of Domestic Violence; Cultural and Immigration Issues in Domestic Violence, Sponsored in Cooperation with the Violence Against Women Office and the Battered Women’s Justice Project, 1999.

Violence Against Women, Law and Litigation, ed. David Frazee, Ann Noel, Andrea Brenneke and Mary C. Dunlap (West, 1997, 1998).

Websites:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/vawo/laws/vawa/vawa.htm, especially the section on “Protections for Battered Immigrant Women and Children”

http://www.now.org/issues/violence/vawa/vawa1998.html for the 1998 version

Week 8: Ethics, Medical Research and Human Rights [top]

Draft is Due

Guide Questions:

1. To what degree should medical experimentation be allowed, without constituting a violation of international human rights?
2. How is the international human body treated as a subject for medical experimentation?
3. Do human radiation experiments in the US violate international human rights?
4. Do HIV trials in other countries constitute a violation of international human rights?

Suggested Readings:

HCR: R. Faden, The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Reflections on a Presidential Commission.

HCR: J.D. Moreno “The Only Feasible Means”: The Pentagon’s Ambivalent Relationship with the Nuremberg Code.

HCR: N.E. Kass, et. Al. Trust: The Fragile Foundation of Contemporary Biomedical Research.

HCR: R.A. Burt, The Suppressed Legacy of Nuremberg.

H. Varmus “Ethical Complexities of Conducting Research in Developing Countries,” New England Journal of Medicine 337 (1997): 1003-5.

P. Lurie, S. M. Wolfe, “Unethical Trials of Interventions to Reduce Perinatal Transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus in Developing Countries,” New England Journal of Medicine 337 (1997): 853-856.

M. Angell, “The Ethics of Clinical Research in the Third World,” New England Journal of Medicine 337 (1997): 847-849.

Part II: Human Rights and the Body in the Humanities [top]

Guide Questions for Weeks 9, 10 and 11: Human Rights and the Body in Literature and Fictional Film [top]

For weeks 9, 10 and 11, the following constitute the general guide questions for novels that are paired with movie correlates for better comparison:

1. What human rights are highlighted in these novels and films? Are there significant convergences and departures in the depictions of human rights and the body in these novels and films?
2. What human rights are in conflict in the depictions of these gendered, raced, classed, aged and multi-classified human bodies in these novels and films?
3. Who act to defend and/or deny human rights in these novels and films, in keeping with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? How are these champions or oppressors raced, classed, gendered, aged and otherwise categorized?
4. Is the action to defend human rights effective or successful in the novels and films? Justify your answers carefully.
5. Is the action to defend human rights in the novels or films violent or nonviolent? Did it bring long range effects for the better or not?
6. How are rights and responsibilities implicitly related in the depictions of raced, gendered, classed, aged bodies in these novels and films?
7. How are individual human bodies and rights configured in relation to those of the body politic in these novels and films?
8. Do any of these situations still have contemporary pertinence?
9. What literary and cinematic devices are used in order to create a bodily rhetoric of human rights?

Week 9: Race, Gender and Class [top]

In Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits

House of Spirits, Bille August, dir., 1993;

Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Beloved, Jonathan Demme, dir., 1998; 

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale, Volke Schlöndorff, dir., 1990.

Week 10: Spring Break [top]

No classes this week.

Week 11: Class and Dystopias [top]

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World,

Brave New World, Leslie Libman and Larry Williams, dirs. 1998 (TV movie);

George Orwell’s Animal Farm 

Animal Farm, Joy Batchelor and John Halas, dirs., 1955; 

John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath

Grapes of Wrath, John Ford, dir., 1940.

Week 12: The Law and Human Rights [top]

In Franz Kafka’s The Trial.

The Trial, David Hugh Jones, dir., 1993.

Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.

A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick, dir., 1971.

George Orwell’s 1984.

1984, Michael Radford, dir., 1984.

Week 13: Concluding Remarks-Postmodern Jurisprudences and Human Rights & the Body [top]

Guide Question:

Do interdisciplinary pursuits in the exploration of human rights and the body have anything to contribute to contemporary jurisprudence?

Suggested Texts (excerpts from):

Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume I (Vintage, 1990)

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Vintage, 195)

Terry Eagleton, “Deconstruction and Human Rights,” in Freedom and Interpretation (Basic Books, 1993).

Gary Minda, Postmodern Legal Movements: Law and Jurisprudence at Century’s End (New York University Press, 1995), especially sections on “Critical Legal Studies,” “Feminist Legal Theory,” “Law and Literature,” “Critical Race Theory,” and “Jurisprudence at Century’s End”

Film

Gandhi, Richard Attenborough, dir., 1982

Week 14 - 15 [top]

Final Presentations

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