LIT 4205 Mariano Spring 2021

In this course, we will study literature that organizes around disseminating information about, preserving accounts of, witnessing, and/or theorizing atrocity and systemic injustice. Our focus will emphasize how the category of “human” has been rhetorically shaped and strategically deployed, raising questions such as:. How do events and creatures become recognized as situations and subjects of rights? What significance does the designation “human” have for the way that subjects negotiate space and power? How does the discourse of human rights facilitate and limit legal frameworks, create and regulate subjectivity and categories of identity, ameliorate and intensify our senses of injustice, and turn persons and societies away from and toward violence? Readings will include formal legal texts, graphic images, fiction, nonfiction, and other media.