Program Overview

HIST251 - Human Rights in History

Year

2024

Credit points

10

Campus offering

The unit is offered at the following campuses:

• Brisbane
• Melbourne
• Strathfield

Unit Description

An awareness of human rights in history is vital for the formation of an outlook shaped by empathy and infused by issues of social justice in a global context.

This unit examines the historical significance of the global search for social justice and human rights. While focusing primarily on events in the last 100 years, the unit will explore the evolution of notions of equality and the search for human dignity since the eighteenth century. In so doing, it will equip students to understand the vital debates about human rights that take place in international conversations on trade, environment, diplomacy, peace, and terrorism today. The history of human rights is a global story but is one that is fractured by place, time, people, power, religion, and politics. This unit provides students with opportunities to understand the issues of the present through the lens of the past, developing skills in debating contested ideas, analyzing case studies, and researching topics on human rights.

Unit Rationale and Aim

The aim of this unit is to enrich students' understanding of the debates about social justice that take place on national and global levels, and equip them to be able to take part in these in an informed and articulate way.

Learning Outcomes

To successfully complete this unit, students will be able to demonstrate the following learning outcomes:

1. Discuss theoretical and factual knowledge about human rights abuses or campaigns and their historical origins based on recent media coverage or primary sources.
2. Communicate clearly in written and/or oral form, in a style appropriate to a specified audience.
3. Locate and use primary and secondary materials appropriate to studies of political, civil, economic, social, environmental, or cultural rights in the international context.
4. Apply critical reading skills to their understanding of human rights and the methods that historians have used to research it.
5. Interpret and reflect on key ethical and historical debates relating to real-world situations/case studies in human rights over time.

Content

Topics may include:

• The world around us: current human rights issues and how to find them.
• What are human rights? Historical origins of human rights.
• Early 20th-century campaigns to document and expose atrocity.
• The League of Nations and its limits: protecting citizens in the interwar period.
• The Holocaust and WWII crimes against humanity.
• Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Trials.
• United Nations conventions; major international and national bodies advocating the importance of Human Rights.
• Citizens as defenders of human rights, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
• Universalism and its challengers, including topics such as "Asian Values" and "Islamic Values": cultural relativism and human rights debates.
• Universalism and its defenders, including topics such as gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights.
• Refugees and the right to seek asylum in a global context.
• Environment as a human rights issue.
• Terrorism, torture, and the fragility of individual rights.
• World Indigenous Peoples reactions and interactions with concepts of human rights.
• Evidence-based debating techniques for human rights topics.

Learning and Teaching Strategy

The unit is delivered as a face-to-face class to immerse students in active learning through activities that facilitate the development of skills fundamental to the discipline of history and deep understanding of course content. This unit engages students in active learning activities, such as reading, writing, discussion, debate, and problem-solving, to promote analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of class content. Students use case studies to explore how what they have learned applies to real-world situations.

Assessment Strategy

The assessment tasks are designed to develop key skills and enrich students' understanding of the debates about social justice that take place on a national level, and equip them to be able to take part in these in an informed and articulate way. The assessments include:

• Hands-On History Task (30%): Requires students to identify human rights abuses or campaigns and engage with debates about human rights in the past and present.
• Research Assignment (40%): Requires students to demonstrate research skills to locate and use primary and secondary materials appropriate to studies on human rights in history and to communicate clearly in written, digital, or oral form to construct an evidence-based historical narrative or argument with appropriate referencing.
• Summative Assessment (30%): Requires students to demonstrate a mastery of unit materials and content and apply analytical skills to understand how time, place, politics, and context have shaped debates about human rights around the world.

Representative Texts and References

• Benson, S. The Making of International Human Rights: the 1960s: Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
• Boyd, D. The Environmental Rights Revolution: a Global Study of Constitutions, Human Rights, and the Environment. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012.
• Bradley, M. The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
• Burke, R. Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
• Eckel, J and Samuel Moyn. The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
• Morsink, J. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting and Intent. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. 1999.
• Neier, A. The International Human Rights Movement: A History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
• Sachedina, A. Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Stone, D. The Historiography of Genocide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
• Tan, H. The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights: Institutionalising Human Rights in Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.