Summer Sessions | Courses | Human Rights

One of the most hotly debated issues of today is the extent to which the state can legitimately dictate or impinge on one’s bodily autonomy. This is a long-running debate in the area of sexual and reproductive rights, but also is relevant to such current debates as the right to die / right to death with dignity; the right to use drugs for recreational or ritual purposes; engaging in hunger strikes as a protected form of freedom of expression; and the debate about whether the state can mandate vaccines. It is a debate that is highly gendered but also raises questions about how political power and socio-economic status influences how governments act on individuals and communities.

How do societies emerging from violence rebuild, and what mechanisms do they employ to punish past perpetrators, to come to terms with difficult pasts, to acknowledge the suffering of victims, and to try to nurture democratic processes that will prevent future violence? This course examines the ways in which societies have addressed the questions of accountability and the challenge of “dealing with the past” in the aftermath of political transition and violent conflict that have marked the last half century. In particular, we will examine the discourse around “historical wrongs,” and attempts—international, national, local—to address such wrongs. The historical context for this exploration is the development, following the defeat of Nazi Germany, of principles, norms and institutions regarding responsibility to memory, universal human rights, and the idea that genocide can and should be prevented. This course will thus begin with an exploration of the Holocaust in memory and history, and an exploration of the post-World War II period as a watershed moment in the development of a discourse around historical justice and the intersection of history, memory and trauma.

The establishment of a new framework for a discourse around history and “dealing with the past” requires an investigation of what it means for a state or a community to take responsibility for its actions, and what repair and prevention look like in post-conflict societies. Much of the course will be devoted to the examination of a series of case studies that coming from the Holocaust, World War II, the fall of communism, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and the Civil Rights movement in the United States. The question of how societies can address historical wrongs is a question that ultimately requires us to consider the relationship between history, memory, trauma and justice. Why does the past matter? Does the pursuit of justice limit, or compromise, the work that historians are expected to do? What new ways of thinking about history have emerged in the period we are examining (we can think about testimony, museums, sites, literature to name just a few)? In exploring these questions, this course seeks to understand what is necessary for societies to deal with violent pasts, and the success and limitations that the discourse and practice of historical justice suggests when it comes to questions of prevention and repair.