Investigating Human Rts Abuses

0-4 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Investigating Human Rights Abuses: Feminist Methodologies This course brings students into the world of international human rights investigations, probing how feminist methodologies (or lack thereof) influence which forms of violence are documented, legitimized, and prioritized by the international community. Students will gain practical skills in collaborative research design (in particular with local feminist human rights organizations); evidence gathering; interviewing survivors; working with interpreters; trends analysis; identification of perpetrators and advocacy targets; and risk analysis, security planning, and threat mitigation while conducting research in conflict zones and under surveillance. Students will engage with knowledge production as a political act, analyzing how activists (including disability rights defenders, queer collectives, feminist groups, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalized human rights defenders) document violence perpetrated against their communities, and contrast this with investigative reporting done by large international NGOs. We will center critical feminist theory as the foundation for human rights investigations that disrupt rather than reproduce violent systems, and ask what solidarity can look like when it is both radical and practical.