HR291-5-SP-CO:
Human Rights in Historical Perspective
PLEASE NOTE: This module is inactive. Visit the Module Directory to view modules and variants offered during the current academic year.
2023/24
Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies (School of)
Colchester Campus
Spring
Undergraduate: Level 5
Inactive
Monday 15 January 2024
Friday 22 March 2024
15
16 January 2020
Requisites for this module
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(none)
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This module explores the historical grounding of 'Human Rights' by examining the origins of many constituent concerns from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. These concerns include the practice and theory of torture, the definition of man and beast, slavery and the rights of the free man, the persecution and judicial treatment of deviance and witchcraft, the interference of Church and State in the freedom of expression, the development of a language of 'rights', the state-led engagement with matters of identification, privacy and security, comparative notions of human rights and tolerance in China, and, more recently, the international attempts at the definition and enforcement of rights.
'Human Rights in Historical Perspective' gives students the opportunity to engage with a very broad range of historical topics, all central to a modern understanding of 'human rights'. It will develop awareness of the complexity and indeterminacy of many constituent issues, the extent and challenge of continuing historical debate, and the relevance of continuing historical research and writing in the exploration of contemporary human rights issues. What are the historical origins of 'rights' that are intellectual and legal constructs invented and promulgated from very particular places at very particular times? The debates are far from over, they are current, and they are exceptionally lively.
This module aims to extend these debates, and is taught, by lecture and seminar, the lectures given by different contributing historians, each with their own specialisms and perspectives. Although the sessions offer contrasting approaches and explore many different subjects, the series also develops a number of important themes across the sessions - and across time and geography. Dispute and argument, both historical and contemporary, remain further common elements.
No information available.
This module gives students the opportunity to engage with a very broad range of historical topics, all central to a modern understanding of ‘human rights’. It will develop awareness of the complexity and indeterminacy of many constituent issues, the extent and challenge of continuing historical debate, and the relevance of continuing historical research and writing in the exploration of contemporary human rights issues.
General reading list:
Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York and London, 2007) Introduction.
Edward Peters, Torture (London, 1985).
Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man : The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982), chs. 3-6.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
Margaret E. McGuinness, 'Peace v. Justice: The Universal declaration of Human Rights and the Modern Origins of the Debate', Diplomatic History 35 (2011), November issue.
It is often argued that it is anachronistic for historians to locate discussion of 'human rights' much before the emergence of the 'language of human rights' in the late eighteenth century, or indeed of its general usage as a term much before the twentieth century. Many historians, however, take another view – such as that championed by Lynn Hunt in her recent best-selling Inventing Human Rights. It has also been argued (by Anthony Pagden and others) that the modern understanding of natural rights evolved in the context of the European struggle to legitimate its overseas empires. The French Revolution changed this by, in effect, linking human rights to the idea of citizenship. Human rights were thus tied not only to a specific ethical-legal code but also implicitly to a particular kind of political system, both of inescapably European origin.
What is incontestable is that numerous elements of what we now consider 'human rights issues' (and what Lynn Hunt calls 'rights talk') derive from practices and debates with ancient histories. A primary interest concerns the philosophies of human interaction and the conceptualization and practice of social justice. In 1755 the French philosophe, Denis Diderot returned again and again to the problem of 'droits naturels' and wrote that 'the use of the term is so familiar that there is almost no one who would not be convinced inside himself that the thing is obviously known to him. This interior feeling is common both to the philosopher and to the man who has not reflected at all.' Diderot's insight was based on an understanding that constituent aspects of human rights boasted a very long history indeed.
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
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Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr Justin Colson, email: jcolson@essex.ac.uk.
Belinda Waterman, Department of History, 01206 872313
Yes
Yes
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No external examiner information available for this module.
Available via Moodle
Of 30 hours, 30 (100%) hours available to students:
0 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s).
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