Available Human Rights Classes at FSU

LIT 4205.001 Literature of Human Rights: American Exemptionalism
Jerrilyn McGregory
Tu/Th, 1:20PM-2:35PM WMS 002

American exemptionalism speaks to the U.S. supporting an international treaty as long as its citizens are exempt from a number of treaty provisions. Poverty has a devastating impact on basic human rights. This course does not intend to point fingers; instead, the assigned literary texts chiefly addresses the complexities of American behavior as relates to human rights. The course will undertake a genre approach that includes not only novels, but poetry, comic art, a play, and short stories. The texts chiefly reveal thought-provoking content negating a monolithic approach. Exemptionalism affects Women’s rights, children’s rights, health, and other inequalities. For our consideration, a vibrant civil society is generally considered to be essential for the protection of specific interest and concerns. The desire to counter formal inequality and discrimination is central to the moral DNA of human rights. We have fundamental human rights simply by virtue of being human: each individual’s claim to human rights pre-exists. However, many human rights violations occur precisely because individuals or communities have been targeted by others because of what distinguishes them from others. Sexual freedom has yet to be formally recognized as a fundamental human right. One of the vulnerable groups is children, who are compelled to live in a world not of their own making. Knowledge is power and, it provides a basis y which human rights violations may be accurately discerned and challenged.


LIT 4205.002 Literature of Human Rights
Trinyan Mariano
Tu/Th, 3:05PM-4:20PM WMS 121

The Literature of Human Rights is an interdisciplinary course addressing the foundational question of what it means to be “human” during the modern era, beginning in the 18th century and continuing into the present, when formal “rights” gave rise to a history of both violence and resistance, driven by acts of inclusion and exclusion from the category of the human. This course situates literature and media at the epicenter of this history, its forms, and its futures. We will study works by refugees, immigrants, incarcerated people, victims of war, and others who dramatize and theorize this epicenter, including authors such as Franz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Achilles Mbembe, Judith Butler, Louise Erdrich, Aleksander Hemon, Thanhha Lai, Salman Rushdie, Leslie Marmon Silko, Jean Genet, and Octavia Butler. Coursework includes extensive reading and engaged discussion, several short papers, a research project, and a presentation.

The course meets distribution requirements for diversity.


LIT 3524.001 LGBTQ Drama
Kirsten Wimberg
Tu/Th, 1:20PM-2:35PM, WMS 108

What is a LGBTQ play? What boundaries does LGBTQ drama seek? What stories and themes is it interested in and what is the relationship between dramatic literature and the LGBTQ community? This course moves through the history of LGBTQ Drama, particularly focused on American works, post-WWII through to new plays. This course is interested in the interplay between LGBTQ Drama and history, so we will also study relevant LGBTQ history, theory, and criticism to develop our understandings on what makes a play LGBTQ, where the genre has been, and where it is headed.

This course fulfills the diversity and genre requirements.