ENG 3931r Spring 2020 Graban

This course invites students to read, analyze, write about, and/or reconstruct cross-cultural spectacles and human rights events. Organized around a series of case studies, the course asks students to explore a variety of modes and forms—including hypertext, trauma narratives, testimonials, essays, archives, memorials, and graphic journalism—studying those modes and forms for insight into how individuals, nations, and discourses enact their human-rights interests from both local and global points of view. Case studies are wide-ranging, including past and present activism; vibrant cultural heritage projects, such as Kantha Threads (Bangladesh) and Art Against Apartheid (South Africa); and the annual St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs, to name only a few. Guest speakers will join us via Skype at key moments throughout the semester. And guiding questions for the course include, but are not limited to: What is involved in the interpretation and critical evaluation of cross-cultural spectacles and human rights events when they occur in such a range of modalities (e.g., written, oral, visual, gestural, spatial, multimodal)? What difference do these interpretive and evaluative abilities make in our own understanding of a liberal arts education? How should we think critically about textual production while we are also interacting with these texts in the world? How can we be, do, or live differently after interacting with them—especially if they relate to cultures and crises that are not our own?