WGST349

Introduces critical debates on human rights. Beginning with a study of the founding of human rights: ideas and institutions, students will have the opportunity to study critiques of the (Western) origins of human rights and the alternate approaches to rights emerging from the nonwestern world. Focuses on multiple conceptions of rights emerging from liberalism and its critics, from scholarship on colonization and decolonization, and feminist and critical theories from the global south. After understanding some of the prominent debates on human rights, emphasis will be on the implications of the approaches to conceptions and practices of human rights, for example on gender rights as human rights; dissent and free speech; migration; and social and economic inequality.

Class: 1A (E), 1B (E), 2 (E),