Politics 400A - ST:Theories of Rights King

Institution:

Whitman College

Subject:

Description:

Human rights are usually associated with the expansion of freedom, political progress, and the spread of universal liberal values. However, the discourse of natural human rights originally emerged in the context of imperialism, political oppression and religious conflict and was deployed to justify imperialism as often as it was used to proclaim human freedom. In this course, we will reconsider contemporary approaches to human rights in light of the history of natural rights. We will begin with an examination of the origins of rights in the early modern natural law tradition, then we will explore the political mobilization of rights in the liberal and U.S. political traditions, and finally we will consider the implications of this history for contemporary debates about universal human rights, the rights of indigenous and minority groups, and other appeals to rights discourse. Distribution area: social science.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.whitman.edu

Phone Number:

(509) 527-5111

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

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