Disagreement over culture and human rights is intense. At its worst, this controversy has led cultural conservatives to label women's rights and sexuality rights as imperialist, and group rights as threats to national unity; and has led feminists, queer activists, and indigenous peoples to attack mainstream culture as irredeemably retrograde and oppressive. The result has been contestation that crosscuts people’s lives in a struggle that pits national values, family, and faith against new generations of human rights, and even these new generations of rights against one another.

Our course begins with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the social movements that arose to extend human rights to women, indigenous peoples, and LGBTQI persons. Next, we examine how scholars deconstructed the assumptions underpinning universality, culture, "women," and sexual identity, as obstacles to rights proliferated. The core of the course focuses on a series of contemporary human rights conundrums from around the globe. Case studies include female genital cutting in Africa, body modification in the US, violence against indigenous women, and gay rights in Uganda. We conclude with an analysis of recent attempts to reconstruct rights movements and current recommendations for overcoming rights conflicts to advance justice. 

There are additional UVa-only syllabus items for this course. Click here to view all the public and UVa-only syllabus items. This link is restricted to UVa-members with Netbadge authentication.