A Global History of Human Rights

This course explores human rights, tracing their development from early conceptions to modern global frameworks. We will begin with an introduction to the course and its key themes, followed by a discussion on the origins of the concept of human rights. Next, students will examine the role of human rights in the age of empires and explore the laws of war in the 19th century and beyond. A case study on the Red Cross highlights the movement’s impact on humanitarian efforts and moves us into the 20th century. For this period, we will analyze human rights dialogues in the interwar period, followed by the global expansion thereof after 1945 and during the Cold War. A case study on human rights and decolonization in Africa moves the course into the post-Cold War era. The course concludes with a two-part analysis of Emotions and Human Rights to help us understand the intersection between the history of emotions and the historiography of human rights.