This course explores human rights rhetoric through readings of a range of non-fiction briefs, academic articles, and reportage, alongside fictional works. It asks students, through critical writing, to come to terms with our responsibilities as global citizens for upholding a culture of dignity in our world. Together, we will examine the way that authors use the written word to push readers to empathize with others, reflect on the past, learn about injustices, and imagine new realities–as we do the same in our own writing.

(Offered as AMST 240 [Pre-1900], EDST-240 and SWAG 243) From Longfellow’s Hiawatha and D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature to Disney’s Pocahontas and more recently Moana to James Cameron’s Avatar, representations of the Indigenous as “Other” have greatly shaped cultural production in America as vehicles for defining the nation and the self.