On Questions of Rights, Responsibility, and Reparations

This class examines concepts of rights, responsibility, and reparations in terms of questions about injustice. Over the course of the trimester, we will consider some of the ways these terms have been used in 20th and 21st century attempts to address the aftermath of intertwined histories of colonialism, slavery and capitalism. We will focus on examples that are different in terms of scale (e.g. institutions such as nation-states and schools, corporations, as well as individuals and groups, and the relations between them), and which differ in terms of political, cultural, national, and historical context. The examples will be situated in relation to each other, not through comparison in terms of similarities and differences, but through historical and conceptual relation. We will examine examples from contexts that may include: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Guatemala’s Commission for Historical Clarification; German Holocaust reparations and Israeli state formation; debates about and proposals for slavery reparations in the United States; College of the Atlantic’s efforts to reckon with its own histories, the controversy over the University of North Carolina’s “Silent Sam” confederate statue, and related discussions about how to “repair” and respond to the aftermaths of past wrongs, including debates over statues, the names of streets and buildings, the content and framing of school curriculums, and the relation between law and justice. This is an interdisciplinary course that draws from work in the Arts and Humanities, including in the fields and disciplines of postcolonial studies, literature, philosophy, history, feminist studies and cultural anthropology. Material will likely include texts by Hannah Arendt, Srinivas Aravamudan, Maoz Azaryahu, W.E.B. Du Bois, Roy L. Brooks, Tina Chanter, Ta-Nehisi Coates, J.M. Coeztee, Jacques Derrida, Euripides, Shoshana Felman, Sigmund Freud, Stuart Hall, Ranjana Khanna, Karl Marx, Chandra Mohanty, Jacques Rancière, Edward Said, Joan Scott, Hortense Spillers and Gayatri Spivak. Readings may include selections from Truth Commission reports and related documents, media articles, as well as fiction works including the play “The Trojan Women,” the novel Disgrace and the films “Bridge Over the Wadi” and “Arna’s Children.” As we move through this material, we will consider questions about inheritance, capital, violence, choice, response, how an “individual” is understood in relation to group categories and contexts, and relations between politics and aesthetics. In doing so, we will address questions about and understandings of “freedom,” “reconciliation,” economic justice, difference and responsibility. Students will be evaluated based on class participation in seminar discussions, weekly reading responses, one short mid-term essay (3 pages) and one short final paper (5 pages). Level: Intermediate. Prerequisites: Open to all college levels, but students should have some prior coursework or background in engaging with some of the conceptual questions that inform this course, and be prepared for a heavy reading load. Permission required. Class limit: 15. Lab fee: None. Meets the following degree requirements: HS

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