The History of Human Rights in Journalism

Undergraduate / Graduate

From the anti-slavery press through the New Journalists, every movement in American reporting has imagined human rights in a distinctive way. Some of those imaginaries have persisted and grown hegemonic, while others now languish in the archive-the old radical newspapers forgotten and unread. This course is dedicated to investigating the history of American journalism to see how the press and human rights coevolved: piecing together historical links between movements, recovering lost possibilities, and looking for future paths of development. Following a line from the abolitionists through the international movement against the Belgian Congo and onto contemporary New Yorker-style journalism, we will learn the history of the news in America. Through that history, we will see how developments in journalism-in content, form, and technology-ultimately changed international ideas of human