The Spring quarter Vienna Human Rights program offers students an opportunity to complete three Human Rights minor core courses abroad, considered from the vantage point of Central Europe. This sequence is taught in English by University of Chicago faculty, its precise topics shifting from year to year in accordance with the interests and expertise of that year’s faculty. In addition to the three Human Rights core courses, students take a fourth course in German, taught at the beginning, intermediate or advanced levels.
Vienna provides a unique destination to study the history and philosophy of human rights, as well as contemporary issues in the field today. The location of the first United Nations World Conference on Human Rights that took place after the Cold War in June 1993, Vienna plays a key role in this program. Excursions and site visits in and around the city complement the content of the courses.
The program is headquartered at the University of Vienna, a major European institution of higher learning, dating from the fourteenth century with a diverse international student body.
These Human Rights core courses will be offered in Vienna in Spring 2020:
JENNIFER PITTS
Human Rights I in Vienna: Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (HMRT 20101)
Many things—perhaps too many—have been said to be human rights. A key task for a philosophy of human rights is to provide a grounding that will enable us to say in what way a human rights claim is not merely a claim to one of many good things but rather a claim to something distinctive, something basic and necessary to human flourishing. A second key task is to explain in what sense a human rights claim is a rights claim, not a request for charity. In this course we will look at several accounts of human rights. We will then ask what sort of international arrangements (including perhaps arrangements that permit humanitarian intervention) would be justifiable in light of our understanding of the moral content and force of human rights.
KAUSHIK SUNDER RAJAN
Human Rights II in Vienna: History and Theory of Human Rights (HMRT 20201)
What are the origins of contemporary concerns with human rights? This course introduces students to the contested global history of human rights, exploring how and why rights talk became believable to states and publics across time and space. It places particular emphasis on the emergence of human rights norms from the Enlightenment through the 1940s, the fluorescence of human rights advocacy especially since the 1970s, and the more recent turn to global justice. Readings include primary sources (textual, visual and aural) along with secondary texts. Students will also visit the memorial and museum of a site of significance to the Holocaust. Previous sites have included Auschwitz and Mauthausen/Gusen.
SUSAN GZESH
Human Rights III in Vienna: Contemporary Issues in Human Rights (HMRT 20301)
This course uses an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the application of international human rights to domestic and international issues. We present several specific case studies as a means to explore the interrelationship of human rights instruments and agencies—and the role of NGOs, film, and social media in advocacy efforts. Topics will include understanding contemporary European perspectives on human rights, the relationship between citizenship and human rights, and cultural relativism vs. universalism. The course will incorporate guest speakers and visits to local NGOs and inter-governmental institutions in Vienna. Students will have two take-home essay assignments, one at “mid-term” and one as their final assignment.
