Fall 2024 Graduate Level Courses in Human Rights Practice
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Fall 2024
Graduate Level Courses in Human Rights Practice (HRTS)
Fully online
Fall I 2024 (Aug 26 – Oct 16, 2024)
HRTS 500: Advancing Human Rights (3 units, required for MA et al)
William Simmons, Ph.D.
This course provides an overview of human rights practice and activism. We will examine grassroots social movements and participatory approaches to human rights activism focusing on the potential ways and means for moving human rights initiatives forward. The focus is on practical methods for assessing, analyzing, and engaging human rights issues. In Fall 2024 we will likely cover such issues as colonialism and de-colonialism, anti-racism movements, recent innovative attempts to find justice for Rohingya refugees, sex worker rights, and trauma and self-care.
HRTS 531: Femicides/Feminicides (3 units, required for GBV Certificate, elective for others)
Instructor Alethia Fernández de la Reguera Ahedo
In this course, students examine one of the most widespread and yet understudied forms of gender-based violence, femicide/feminicide, or the targeted killing of women and girls because they are female, often enabled through state complicity. Students will learn about scholarship, activism, and legal policies related to femicide/feminicide. Root causes and psychologies of femicide/feminicide are explored as well as compounding forms of violence that often lead to the death of women and girls, especially intimate partner violence, but also forced sterilization, forced motherhood, and sexual violence. The class will offer an international perspective on the struggle of women’s organizations and feminist to generate social and cultural awareness and transformations about this problem and to demand legal and public policy actions from States to eradicate these kinds of crimes.
HRTS 543: Advancing Human Rights through Technology (3 units)
Emily Lyons, Ph.D.
This course provides a broad overview of the range of technology applications used in human rights reporting, documentation, data sharing, and secure communications. Students will gain an overview of emerging technologies and applications for human rights advocacy, such as using satellite imagery, analyzing big data, working with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and using text messaging and participatory video to build grassroots support communities.
FTV 544: Documentary Production (3 units, req for HRTS/Doc Media Certificate, for others, elective)
Lisa Molomot, MFA
An introduction to documentary filmmaking for students with diverse academic backgrounds and research interests. The course is designed to serve students with no prior production training, as well as those with experience. Students will acquire and further strengthen camera, sound and editing skills, and learn to conceptualize, develop, shoot and edit short documentary projects geared toward their research interests. The course is structured primarily as a workshop to support the development, production and post-production of your projects. A significant amount of time will be devoted to individual meetings to develop and workshop your work in progress. We will also have video lectures, class discussions, weekly readings, production exercises and assignments to strengthen your knowledge of documentary filmmaking.
HRTS 595A: Human Rights Across Contexts – Cultural Heritage Protection (3 units, elective)
Leonard Hammer, Ph.D., LL.M.
This course will examine the meaning and scope of cultural heritage protection, what that means in practice and what is the implication of such protection for people from around the world, including indigenous and minority groups. We also shall critically examine existing international avenues of cultural heritage protection and account for cultural heritage protection in conflict zones (including as a potential avenue for conciliation between opposing groups). Student work shall center on considering the ways and means human rights practitioners apply cultural heritage protection in different contexts.
*******The following courses require permission to enroll**********
Certificate Projects courses 3 units each (required for Certificate students, by Certificate Type)
HRTS 598a Certificate Project in HRTS and Technology
HRTS 598b Certificate Project in Gender Based Violence
HRTS 598c Certificate Project in Human Rights and Doc Media
Arrange a project with a professor with whom you want to work, and then fill out an independent study form (599 form) and send to the professor. The professor will forward the request to Mette Brogden to provide permission to enroll.
HRTS 599: Independent Study (1-3 units, elective)
Arrange a project with a professor with whom you want to work, and then fill out an independent study form (599 form) and send to the professor. The professor will forward the request to Mette Brogden to provide permission to enroll. Independent studies are useful for helping to explore a literature or a topic that prepares you for undertaking your MA capstone or Certificate Project.
HRTS 909: MA Capstone (3 units, required for MA Students)
Arrange a project with a professor with whom you want to work, and then fill out an independent study form (599 form) and send to the professor. The professor will forward the request to Mette Brogden to provide permission to enroll.
Fall II (Oct 17-Dec 11, 2024)
HRTS 501: NGOs/CSOs Advancing Human Rights (3 units)*
The course focuses on the practical aspects of advancing human rights through civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with a special emphasis on some of the dramatic transformations they have undergone in the past couple of decades. The course will cover such critical issues as: management of resources, relationships with personnel and boards of directors, marketing human rights issues, fundraising and financial management, accountability, navigating governmental corruption, program evaluation, and delivering outputs such as shadow reports and white papers.
* The 501 class is required for MA students, and it can fulfill a requirement for Certificate students. For the Certificate, you must take 500, and then either 501 or 510 as your two required classes.
HRTS 541 – Advancing Human Rights Through Documentary Media (3 units, required for Doc Media Certificate, elective for others)
Beverly Seckinger, MFA, Professor and Documentary Filmmaker
This course surveys current models for making and using documentary media in the service of human rights practice and activism. Interrogating concepts such as witness, testimony and evidence, historical memory, trans-media storytelling and convergence, strategic partnerships and impact campaigns, and emergent participatory frameworks, the course explores a variety of approaches to media production, exhibition, distribution and advocacy. Each course module includes interactions with filmmakers and/or media activists in the field via video conferencing; exploring media products such as films, websites and online tutorials; and critical and practical readings. Students will develop term projects in consultation with the instructor.
HRTS 596A: Human Rights Crises and Trauma (3 units, elective)
Mette Brogden, Ph.D.
This course will explore trauma sequelae of human rights violations and also secondary trauma sequelae, including for human rights practitioners and students in our program. We will look at traumatic events, what causes trauma impacts in those who experience the events, lingering impacts of traumatic events and the harms that violence and war, social and economic exclusion can bring to people and societies. We will interrogate the literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as a relatively new literature on post-traumatic growth. Finally, we will explore how people manage traumatic stress symptoms and PTSD related to human rights violations—either acute violations associated with torture and war/refugee flight sequelae, or long-term violations associated with marginalization, exclusion, racism and other forms of identity discrimination, and structural violence. We will then turn to ways to manage secondary trauma, including mindfulness, meaning, beauty, nature immersion, and support groups. Students will submit weekly reflection pieces as well as contribute to discussions.
HRTS 596b: Cutting Edge Advances in Human Rights: Media Advocacy Skills for Social Justice
Raymond Smith, PH.D., LL.M.
This new course will provide training in key media advocacy skills useful for those seeking to promote human rights and social justice through their work and/or activism. Students will be introduced to four distinct skill sets, receive a training session in each, and complete readings and assignments related to each, in addition to a final project focused on one of the skills. Each media advocacy skill is taught by an instructor who is an experienced practitioner in their field. The skillsets covered in fall 2024 session 2 will include the following: digital storytelling; working with the press; op-ed and blogpost writing; and social media advocacy. At the start of the semester, students will identify the particular human rights or social justice issue that they wish to focus on, which may be one on which they are already working or one that they wish to work on. Students will be encouraged to identify a specific non-governmental organization (NGO) or community-based agency that works on that topic.
*******The following courses require permission to enroll**********
Certificate Projects courses 3 units each (required for Certificate students, by Certificate Type)
HRTS 598a Certificate Project in HRTS and Technology
HRTS 598b Certificate Project in Gender Based Violence
HRTS 598c Certificate Project in Human Rights and Doc Media
Arrange a project with a professor with whom you want to work, and then fill out an independent study form (599 form) and send to the professor. The professor will forward the request to Mette Brogden to provide permission to enroll.
HRTS 599: Independent Study (1-3 units, elective)
Arrange a project with a professor with whom you want to work, and then fill out an independent study form (599 form) and send to the professor. The professor will forward the request to Mette Brogden to provide permission to enroll. Independent studies are useful for helping to explore a literature or a topic that prepares you for undertaking your MA capstone or Certificate Project.
HRTS 909: MA Capstone (3 units, required for MA Students)
Arrange a project with a professor with whom you want to work, and then fill out an independent study form (599 form) and send to the professor. The professor will forward the request to Mette Brogden to provide permission to enroll.