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.

SoleJourney / Project 1 draft due

Your revised draft of Project 1 is due to Catherine and me by the start of next class. Per my earlier instructions: Each of you should be submitting at least one Word document: i.e., your revised 500-word reflection on your project. However, as to the project itself, many of you are working in media other than print: you’re creating videos, photo-essays, graphic novels, etc. If you’re one of these people, you’ll want to turn your project draft in by (a) finding the appropriate website for posting your kind of media; (b) posting your draft there; and (c) sending me and Catherine a link to the work you’ve posted. For example, if you’ve created a video, you might post it to YouTube; if you’ve created a collage, you might photograph it and post it to Flickr; if you’re creating a radio play, you might post it on archive.org. If you don’t know of a site that hosts the kind of work that you’re doing, please email me ASAP, and I'll tell you where to go.

(A reminder: After Catherine and I read/view/listen/play your project draft, we'll write back with suggestions for revision. The key word here is that last one: revision. You'll revise your project again before submitting it for a final grade at the end of the course.)

2. Please read Inventing Human Rights, Chapter 4: "'There will be no end of it:' The Consequences of Declaring,"and please watch the documentary film SoleJourney, by Kate Burns and Sheila E. Schroeder (available on DU CourseMedia). One of the filmmakers, Kate Burns, is coming to our to class on Tuesday. I think you'll be really interested to talk with Kate, both because her film is so interesting and because Kate will be teaching your SJUS class in the spring.

3. Please send Catherine and me a 1-paragraph response to this question: How can we see the events depicted in SoleJourney as a synecdoche for a larger social structure or historical trend (i.e., of what larger wholes are these events a representative part)? And how does the film serve to ironically subvert, undermine, or otherwise cause us to question the conventional understanding of these larger social and/or historical wholes? It'll really be great to use your responses as the basis of discussion when When Kate visits class; so please deploy all of your considerable brain power to develop a keen and insightful response to the question. A good way to come up with a keen, insightful response is by drawing upon the Inventing Human Rights to help you.

Martin Luther King, Jr. "I've Been to the Mountaintop"

Delivered on April 3 1968, in the Mason Temple, Memphis, TN.
The text of the speech is here.

Reading for next time: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963

Below is an embedded Google Books version of the reading for next time: the chapter on the Montgomery Bus Boycott from Taylor Branch's truly magnificent three-volume biography of Martin Luther King. I'm not sure how deep into the chapter Google Books will let you get before it cuts off. I'd planned to put up a PDF, but the book's checked out of the library and I won't be able to purchase a copy till later tonight. So expect to see the PDF tomorrow, and, in the meantime, if you'd like to get started, you can begin reading this version.

(Please note that there's no writing assignment attached to this reading assignment. I'd prefer that you concentrate on completing your draft of Project 1.)

Project 1 Assignment: Tell a Story for Social Justice

Over the last few weeks we’ve read and viewed a number of compelling stories for social justice. I say “for social justice” rather than “about social justice” because, although the stories have indeed been about a variety of social justice issues, the creators of those stories tell them in order to advance a cause. By seeking not merely to describe the world but to change it, these storytellers act for social justice.

In this project, you’ll attempt to do the same thing: You’ll tell a story that aims to change how your audience feels, thinks, and acts about a social justice issue that is vitally important to you.

• WHO you tell the story to depends on the issue you’re trying to affect. So ask yourself: Who is in a position to do something about the issue I want to affect? Whose emotions, thought, and actions am I trying to change? Your audience may consist of a single, relatively small group (say, students on campus), or it may be a large and various group (say, conservative Christians + liberal Muslims + Conservative and Reform Jews + engaged Buddhists). Who the audience for your story is will depend on what you're trying to do.
• WHAT story you tell depends on who you're trying to reach. It might be the story of a personal experience (like The Photographer and The Long Loneliness) or of the experience of someone you know (like The Road to Guantanamo), or of someone you’ve never even met (like Taylor Branch’s America in the King Years). The important thing isn’t where the story comes from; the important thing is that it be compelling: i.e., that it serve to move your particular audience and advance your cause.
• HOW you tell the story depends upon who you're trying to reach and the nature of the story you're telling them. You might tell it in words; you might tell it in pictures; or you might use both. You might create a video; you might create a podcast; or you might create a photo-essay, graphic novella, or suite of poems. Here again, the important thing is that your story be told in the most compelling way: i.e., that it move your particular audience and advance your cause.

Due dates, etc.

The first draft of your project is due in class on October 11. Because I want you to get feedback from your peers before you craft a really polished story, video, graphic novella, etc., your first draft should be truly rough: i.e., no more than an outline of plot points, or a rough sequence of un-shot video scenes, or a sketch of some comic panels, etc.

In addition to your rough draft, you should bring a roughly 500-word reflection on what you’ve done so far. That reflection should explain: (1) who your audience is, and why, given the change you want to bring about, you’ve decided to focus on this audience; (2) why you believe the particular story you tell will move your particular audience; and (3) why, given your audience and the story you want to tell, you’ve decided to tell it in the particular form that you do (i.e., as a short story, or a video, or a podcast, or a photo-essay, etc.)

A polished draft and revised reflection are due to John and Catherine by the start of class on October 18.


Your final draft and reflection are due to John and Catherine by noon on Tuesday, November 22.

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”

Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness

For our next class meeting, please complete the following:

1. Please read the chapter titled "Torrents of Emotion" from Lynn Hunt's Inventing Human Rights.
2. Please read pages 113-166 of the selection from Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness that I’ve put up on Blackboard. (It's in the folder labelled "PDF files.")
3. Please write a brief essay (say, between 250 and 500 words) in which you explain how Day's narrative dramatizes at least ONE of what, in class, we were calling "the paradoxes of human rights." You’ll recall that we discussed how, in order to promote justice, human rights must paradoxically be both natural and social, both universal and particular, both equal and respectful of difference, both individually held and collectively held. As you’ll see, Day struggles with these paradoxes in her own thinking and in her own life; indeed, these struggles make up the themes of her story. So pick out what strikes you as an especially interesting moment in that story and interpret it as you would a piece of literary fiction, say, or a poem or play, by asking: What does this specific moment in the story have to say about one of the book’s larger themes?

Please email your responses to me and to Catherine by the start of class on Tuesday.

Also, please note that I added an “extra” chapter to the PDF. The portion of The Long Loneliness that I’m asking you to read is the climax, so to speak, of Day’s spiritual autobiography; it recounts the religious conversion that she underwent before she undertook the work for which she became well known. But since I thought that some of you will want to read about this better-known work, I included the chapter that describes the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement. You’re not required to read this last chapter (titled “Peasant of the Pavements”), but it’s there if you’re interested.

Speaking of which, here’s a bit of background on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement:

The Long Loneliness is the spiritual autobiography of Dorothy Day, a convert to Catholicism who, along with a fellow named Peter Maurin, founded what became known as the Catholic Worker Movement. The group started out in 1933 by publishing a newspaper (called The Catholic Worker, still in publication today) whose mission was/is to speak out against poverty, war, and injustice of all sorts. They then opened what they called a "house of hospitality" on NY's Lower East Side, where the poor could find food, friendship, and a respite from the world outside. Catholic Worker houses soon began to spring up all around the country and eventually around the world. (Even today, you can find a Catholic Worker house in Denver (it's at 24th and Welton), and members of the local Catholic Worker community serve meals at the Saint Francis Center.) 

Catholic Worker communities are not an official part of the Catholic church; they're independent of the church and, indeed, largely independent of one another; they're made up of individuals who've decided to make common cause with the poor, and to do so outside of any official institutional structure. 

Day herself is a fascinating person. Prior to her conversion, she was a member of the bohemian crowd in Greenwich Village, where she hung out with lots of famous and soon-to-be-famous poets, playwrights, painters, and the like. She was also deeply involved in the radical politics of her time, especially that of the Communists. In fact, she made her living as a journalist writing for various leftwing publications.  

At the age of about 30, however, Day underwent a profound religious experience, converting to Catholicism and leaving behind the political ideologies of her youth as well as many of her Greenwich Village friends. Soon, she started the first Catholic Worker community, channeling her activist energies into work on behalf of the poor and her literary energies into The Catholic Worker newspaper. Although, in her day, she was frequently in conflict with the powers-that-be in the Catholic Church, she has recently been named a candidate for sainthood. 

If you’re interested, you’ll find an old television interview with Dorothy Day here. Not only is the interview quite interesting in own right, but, because it was filmed in the early 1970s, it features some truly awesome clothes, hair, and visual effects.