| Course Objectives: | This course meets the following General Education Abilities by accomplishing the
specific learning objectives listed below:
Communicate effectively through writing
Assimilate, analyze, and present in written forms, a body of information
Adapt writing to circumstances and audience
Interpret content of written materials on related topics from various
disciplines
Compose effective written materials for various academic and
professional contexts
Produce writing that is stylistically appropriate and mature
This course meets all of the above criteria. Students have at least six writing
opportunities in the 16 week semester. Short writing assignments require the
students to analyze specific bodies of information relating to human rights in
theory and practice. Students write essays for different audiences and assignments:
at times they are writing to each other; other assignments require prose aimed to the
universal reader. Students are tested for writing skills during in class tests, and
in assigned essays and research topics. Students in 3640 interpret content in other
disciplines and arts. Writing assignments require the students to explore various
voices and styles.
Communicate effectively through speech
Assimilate, analyze, and present in oral forms, a body of information
Adapt communication to circumstances and audience
Communicate in various modes and media, including the proper use of
appropriate technology
Produce communication that is stylistically appropriate and mature
Communicate for academic and professional contexts
GEOG 3640 promotes effective communication through speech in all of the above ways.
Students give regular oral presentations, in which they must adapt communication to
differing circumstances and audiences. Class discussions and individual
interventions require students to articulate positions in reaction to readings and
discussion questions. Students must think critically about power, violence,
humanitarianism and violence, and be able to articulate their arguments. Moreover,
students must analyze various positions; for example, after viewing a film clip of a
segment of a war crimes trial, students must articulate the positions of the
witnesses, the judges, the prosecutor and the defendant.
Computer Literacy
Use word processing software
Use specialized computer software (such as, CAD, GIS)
Use a spreadsheet application
Use a database application
Use presentation software
Use the web
Use E-mail and use OASIS
Students in 3640 must interact with technology, especially computers and the
internet. In 3640 students watch on-line video from war crimes trials, interact
with websites to access data on human rights instruments, and learn about web-based
research resources for country-specific human rights reports. Certain students
develop these skills in conjunction with GIS techniques.
Critical Thinking (Engage in complex thought, analysis, and reasoning)
Consider and engage opposing points of view
Communicate for academic and professional contexts
Support a consistent purpose and point of view
Assimilate, analyze, and present a body of information
Analyze arguments
Interpret inferences and develop subtleties of symbolic and indirect
discourse
Critical thinking is the core of the educational experience in the Geography of
Human Rights. In the course, students critically examine the idea of human rights,
as well as its dialectics with geography. Specifically, in this analysis, human
rights are socially constructed, and therefore always under contestation. By
analyzing human rights as an idea situated in particular spaces at particular times,
the course uses geography to illuminate the uneven development of human rights. A
geography of human rights reveals what counts as a human right, and a human rights
violation, rather than reifying the already-existing, taken-for-granted, assumption
of what human rights “are.” Appreciating the social constructed of human rights help
illuminate the power-relations wrapped up in the concept of human rights; the failure
to recognize human rights as social constructs disguises the intense power-relations
that goes into who has the power to determine what counts as a human right.
Central to the project of critical thinking in 3640 is the dialectical relationship
between geographies and human rights. In this approach, geography is more than
just a ‘backdrop’ to events of human society. Rather, the transformations of places
and spaces influence the activities of society, as social movements and organizations
transform places and spaces. In studying the social construction of human rights,
students gain an understanding of the complex politics that determines what ‘counts’
as a right as well as who enjoys the protection of such rights.
GEOG 3640 engages moral reasoning in every fashion. This course examines the
problems, promises and paradoxes of the development of human rights. We investigate
how, where, and under what specific conditions massive violations of human rights
occur. We examine these issues by studying specific cases: apartheid in South Africa,
the phenomena of 'disappearances' and state-sponsored terror in Latin America, ethnic
cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, and violence in Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan and the
DRC. As geographers, we study the local, national and global aspects of the
violation of human rights and the responses to such crisis. We also address
contemporary theoretical debates regarding violence and power, memory and history,
trauma and testimony, and the dilemmas of recovering in societies that have
experienced mass atrocity. Our focus is the pervasive problem of impunity. The aim of
the course is to educate class members as to the particular experiences of the cases
we address, while theorizing violence and power. |