Bringing Human Rights Home


Book Description

Throughout its history, America's policies have alternatively embraced human rights, regarded them with ambivalence, or rejected them out of hand. The essays in this volume put these shifting political winds into a larger historical perspective, from the country's very beginnings to the present day.




Bringing Human Rights Home: From civil rights to human rights


Book Description

This three-volume set chronicles the history of human rights in the United States from the perspective of domestic social justice activism. First, the set examines the political forces and historic events that resulted in the U.S.'s failure to embrace human rights principles at home while actively (albeit selectively) championing and promoting human rights abroad. It then considers the current explosion of human rights activism around issues within the United States and the way human rights is transforming domestic social justice work. The first volume provides a historical perspective on the United States' ambivalent relationship with the international human rights movement. It examines the implications of recognizing domestic rights violations as a matter of international concern and the relationship between international and domestic law. It also addresses the role the Cold War and Southern opposition to international scrutiny of its Jim Crow policies and segregation played in shaping U.S. attitudes toward human rights generally and social and economic rights in particular. These factors forced social justice organizations to largely abandon employing a human rights framework in their domestic work and had a lasting impact on U.S. perspectives about fundamental rights and the role of government. The set also chronicles current domestic human rights work. Volumes two and three consider why domestic activists currently are using human rights and the tactical advantages and practical challenges posed by such strategies. These volumes cover everything from globalization to terrorism and the erosion of civil rights protections that led to a renewed interest in human rights; human rights versus civil rights strategies; and the different ways human rights can support social activism.




Bringing Human Rights Home


Book Description

This three-volume set chronicles the history of human rights in the United States from the perspective of domestic social justice activism. First, the set examines the political forces and historic events that resulted in the U.S.'s failure to embrace human rights principles at home while actively (albeit selectively) championing and promoting human rights abroad. It then considers the current explosion of human rights activism around issues within the United States and the way human rights is transforming domestic social justice work. The first volume provides a historical perspective on the United States' ambivalent relationship with the international human rights movement. It examines the implications of recognizing domestic rights violations as a matter of international concern and the relationship between international and domestic law. It also addresses the role the Cold War and Southern opposition to international scrutiny of its Jim Crow policies and segregation played in shaping U.S. attitudes toward human rights generally and social and economic rights in particular. These factors forced social justice organizations to largely abandon employing a human rights framework in their domestic work and had a lasting impact on U.S. perspectives about fundamental rights and the role of government. The set also chronicles current domestic human rights work. Volumes two and three consider why domestic activists currently are using human rights and the tactical advantages and practical challenges posed by such strategies. These volumes cover everything from globalization to terrorism and the erosion of civil rights protections that led to a renewed interest in human rights; human rights versus civil rights strategies; and the different ways human rights can support social activism.




Bringing Human Rights Home: Portraits of the movement


Book Description

This three-volume set chronicles the history of human rights in the United States from the perspective of domestic social justice activism. First, the set examines the political forces and historic events that resulted in the U.S.'s failure to embrace human rights principles at home while actively (albeit selectively) championing and promoting human rights abroad. It then considers the current explosion of human rights activism around issues within the United States and the way human rights is transforming domestic social justice work. The first volume provides a historical perspective on the United States' ambivalent relationship with the international human rights movement. It examines the implications of recognizing domestic rights violations as a matter of international concern and the relationship between international and domestic law. It also addresses the role the Cold War and Southern opposition to international scrutiny of its Jim Crow policies and segregation played in shaping U.S. attitudes toward human rights generally and social and economic rights in particular. These factors forced social justice organizations to largely abandon employing a human rights framework in their domestic work and had a lasting impact on U.S. perspectives about fundamental rights and the role of government. The set also chronicles current domestic human rights work. Volumes two and three consider why domestic activists currently are using human rights and the tactical advantages and practical challenges posed by such strategies. These volumes cover everything from globalization to terrorism and the erosion of civil rights protections that led to a renewed interest in human rights; human rights versus civil rights strategies; and the different ways human rights can support social activism.




Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms


Book Description

This book offers research-based models of exemplary practice for educators at all grade levels, from primary school to university, who want to integrate human rights education into their classrooms. It includes ten examples of projects that have been effectively implemented in classrooms: two from elementary school, two from middle school, three from high school, two from community college, and one from a university. Each model discusses the scope of the project, its rationale, students' response to the content and pedagogy, challenges or controversies that arose, and their resolution. Unique in integrating theory and practice and in addressing human rights issues with special relevance for communities of color in the US, this book provides indispensable guidance for those studying and teaching human rights.




Taking a Stand


Book Description

"In association with Amnesty International"--Dust jacket back.




From Selma to Moscow


Book Description

The 1960s marked a transformation of human rights activism in the United States. At a time of increased concern for the rights of their fellow citizens—civil and political rights, as well as the social and economic rights that Great Society programs sought to secure—many Americans saw inconsistencies between domestic and foreign policy and advocated for a new approach. The activism that arose from the upheavals of the 1960s fundamentally altered U.S. foreign policy—yet previous accounts have often overlooked its crucial role. In From Selma to Moscow, Sarah B. Snyder traces the influence of human rights activists and advances a new interpretation of U.S. foreign policy in the “long 1960s.” She shows how transnational connections and social movements spurred American activism that achieved legislation that curbed military and economic assistance to repressive governments, created institutions to monitor human rights around the world, and enshrined human rights in U.S. foreign policy making for years to come. Snyder analyzes how Americans responded to repression in the Soviet Union, racial discrimination in Southern Rhodesia, authoritarianism in South Korea, and coups in Greece and Chile. By highlighting the importance of nonstate and lower-level actors, Snyder shows how this activism established the networks and tactics critical to the institutionalization of human rights. A major work of international and transnational history, From Selma to Moscow reshapes our understanding of the role of human rights activism in transforming U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s and highlights timely lessons for those seeking to promote a policy agenda resisted by the White House.




Human Rights in the Americas


Book Description

This interdisciplinary book explores human rights in the Americas from multiple perspectives and fields. Taking 1492 as a point of departure, the text explores Eurocentric historiographies of human rights and offer a more complete understanding of the genealogy of the human rights discourse and its many manifestations in the Americas. The essays use a variety of approaches to reveal the larger contexts from which they emerge, providing a cross-sectional view of subjects, countries, methodologies and foci explicitly dedicated toward understanding historical factors and circumstances that have shaped human rights nationally and internationally within the Americas. The chapters explore diverse cultural, philosophical, political and literary expressions where human rights discourses circulate across the continent taking into consideration issues such as race, class, gender, genealogy and nationality. While acknowledging the ongoing centrality of the nation, the volume promotes a shift in the study of the Americas as a dynamic transnational space of conflict, domination, resistance, negotiation, complicity, accommodation, dialogue, and solidarity where individuals, nations, peoples, institutions, and intellectual and political movements share struggles, experiences, and imaginaries. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of InterAmerican studies and those from all disciplines interested in Human Rights.




The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights


Book Description

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights provides a comprehensive, transnational, and interdisciplinary map to this emerging field, offering a broad overview of human rights and literature while providing innovative readings on key topics. The first of its kind, this volume covers essential issues and themes, necessarily crossing disciplines between the social sciences and humanities. Sections cover: subjects, with pieces on subjectivity, humanity, identity, gender, universality, the particular, the body forms, visiting the different ways human rights stories are crafted and formed via the literary, the visual, the performative, and the oral contexts, tracing the development of the literature over time and in relation to specific regions and historical events impacts, considering the power and limits of human rights literature, rhetoric, and visual culture Drawn from many different global contexts, the essays offer an ideal introduction for those approaching the study of literature and human rights for the first time, looking for new insights and interdisciplinary perspectives, or interested in new directions for future scholarship. Contributors: Chris Abani, Jonathan E. Abel, Elizabeth S. Anker, Arturo Arias, Ariella Azoulay, Ralph Bauer, Anna Bernard, Brenda Carr Vellino, Eleni Coundouriotis, James Dawes, Erik Doxtader, Marc D. Falkoff, Keith P. Feldman, Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg, Audrey J. Golden, Mark Goodale, Barbara Harlow, Wendy S. Hesford, Peter Hitchcock, David Holloway, Christine Hong, Madelaine Hron, Meg Jensen, Luz Angélica Kirschner, Susan Maslan, Julie Avril Minich, Alexandra Schultheis Moore, Greg Mullins, Laura T. Murphy, Hanna Musiol, Makau Mutua, Zoe Norridge, David Palumbo-Liu, Crystal Parikh, Katrina M. Powell, Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Mark Sanders, Karen-Magrethe Simonsen, Joseph R. Slaughter, Sharon Sliwinski, Sidonie Smith, Domna Stanton, Sarah G. Waisvisz, Belinda Walzer, Ban Wang, Julia Watson, Gillian Whitlock and Sarah Winter.




Human Rights in the United States


Book Description

This book brings to light emerging evidence of a shift toward a fuller engagement with international human rights norms and their application to domestic policy dilemmas in the United States. The volume offers a rich history, spanning close to three centuries, of the marginalization of human rights discourse in the United States. Contributors analyze cases of US human rights advocacy aimed at addressing persistent inequalities within the United States itself, including advocacy on the rights of persons with disabilities; indigenous peoples; lone mother-headed families; incarcerated persons; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people; and those displaced by natural disasters. It also explores key arenas in which legal scholars, policy practitioners and grassroots activists are challenging multiple divides between 'public' and 'private' spheres (for example, in connection with children's rights and domestic violence) and between 'public' and 'private' sectors (specifically, in relation to healthcare and business and human rights).