Which Way Home assignment

 For next class, please read Inventing Human Rights, chapter 5: “‘The Soft Power of Humanity:’ Why Human Rights Failed Only to Succeed in the Long Run,” then watch Rebecca Cammisa’s Which Way Home (on DU Course Media), and then write a response to the following:

Lynn Hunt contends that the rise of the nation-state served both to advance and to frustrate the spread of human rights. On the one hand, many of the new national constitutions enshrined in law the individual rights of their citizens. On the other hand, those rights were understood to belong not to all human beings universally but to the particular groups regarded as “true” members of the nation in question, thus giving rise to all manner of discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, religion, and gender. A contemporary instance of this conflict between particular, nation-based rights and universal, human rights can be found in the controversies surrounding immigration. So, in a 300–500-word essay, please use Hunt’s argument to analyze the plight of the Central American child migrants depicted in Which Way Home. How does their plight reflect the conflict between national rights and human rights?

Please email your response to Catherine and John by the start of class on Tuesday.

for next class: Hunt/Guantanamo/Literacy Narrative

Here’s the homework assignment for next class:

— Read Chapter 2 of Inventing Human Rights: "'Bone of their Bone:' Abolishing Torture."
— Watch The Road to Guantanamo (on DU Course Media)
— Write write a response to ONE of the following two prompts:

Prompt 1. In “Bone of their Bone,” Hunt writes:

It might seem rather a stretch to link blowing one’s nose into a handkerchief, listening to music, reading a novel, or ordering a portrait to the abolition of torture and the moderation of cruel punishment. Yet legally sanctioned torture did not end just because judges gave up on it or because Enlightenment writers eventually opposed it. Torture ended because the traditional framework of pain and personhood fell apart, to be replaced, bit by bit, by a new framework, in which individuals owned their bodies, had rights to their separateness and to bodily inviolability, and recognized in other people the same passions, sentiments, and sympathies as in themselves. “The men, or perhaps the women,” to return to the good doctor Rush one last time, “whose persons we detest [convicted criminals], possess sould and bodies composed of the same materials as those of our friends and relations.” If we contemplate their miseries “without emotion or sympathy,” then “the principle of sympathy” itself “will cease to act altogether; and . . . will soon lose its place in the human breast.” (111-12)

To judge by the treatment meted out to those accused of being “enemy combatants” in The Road to Guantanamo, our culture’s “framework of pain and personhood” is falling apart again, to be replaced this time by one in which the principle of sympathy has indeed “lost its place in the human breast.” How does The Road to Guantanamo, through its artistry, seek to fight against this loss? That is, how do the filmmakers use the medium of filmic storytelling to create the film's own “framework of pain and personhood,” wherein the principle of human sympathy is returned to its proper place. And via what verbal and/or visual storytelling techniques does the film "teach" that framework to its audience?

(Your response should be about 250-500 words in length. Please email it to Catherine and John.)

Prompt 2. Complete the literacy narrative that you started today in class. Tell the story of an experience of reading that you’ve had that significantly changed the way that you view yourself, the world or some aspect thereof.  And try to write your story in such a way as to grip your readers, so that you’re writing, too, has a powerful, transformative effect. And remember: you're not trying merely to summarize what you read; you're trying to tell the story of your experience of reading.

(Your story should be at least 250-500 words in length.  Please email it to Catherine and John.)

Please remember that you are to respond EITHER to Prompt 1 OR to Prompt 2, NOT to both. However, even if you're writing to Prompt 2, please be sure to read Hunt and to watch the film.

A note about DU CourseMedia

• To access CourseMedia, go here. 
• Log in using you student ID and passcode (i.e., the same ID and passcode you use for webCentral and MyWeb).
• Click on the image beside “SJUS videos.”
• Click on the image beside “Road to Guantanamo”

Trailers and previews of our course texts

Here are some sneak peaks from/about the texts we'll be reading and viewing in class this fall.

Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights.
From the publisher: How were human rights invented, and how does their tumultuous history influence their perception and our ability to protect them today? From Professor Lynn Hunt comes this extraordinary cultural and intellectual history, which traces the roots of human rights to the rejection of torture as a means for finding the truth. She demonstrates how ideas of human relationships portrayed in novels and art helped spread these new ideals far and wide. Hunt also shows the continued relevance of human rights in today's world.



Here's a lecture that Hunt recently gave, summarizing the main argument made in Inventing Human Rights:



Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefèvre, The Photographer.
From the publisher: In 1986, Afghanistan was torn apart by a war with the Soviet Union. This graphic novel/photo-journal is a record of one reporter's arduous and dangerous journey through Afghanistan accompanying the Doctors Without Borders. Didier Lefèvre’s photography, paired with the art of Emmanuel Guibert, tells the powerful story of a mission undertaken by men and women dedicated to mending the wounds of war.

Clipped from: www.firstsecondbooks.com (share this clip)

Here's a short piece about how The Photographer was made: