CUL - Main Content

Documentation of human rights abuses, movements, organizations, and achievements is vital for both teaching and research. Using a number of specific examples, this presentation will address how primary sources used in the classroom can provide a powerful and engaging tool for students to see the human face of human rights and to explore some of the complexities of resistance, mixed motives, tensions between theory and practice, compromises, and contrasts between visions and reality. It also will address why no serious scholarship in human rights can take place without research in original documentation. Although both teaching and research may initially be focused upon examinations of historical cases from the past, there are lessons of history, and the results of the endeavors can, and often do, have a direct impact upon present advocacy and social justice.