Print and PDF Options

This is an archived copy of the 2021-2022 catalog. To access the most recent version of the catalog, please visit http://calendar.carleton.ca.

Human Rights Program Committee
(Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences)

Human Rights (HUMR) Courses

HUMR 1001 [1.0 credit]
Introduction to Human Rights

Human rights from an interdisciplinary perspective. Topics may include the foundations and nature of rights, roots of inequality and oppression, aboriginal rights, racism, women and rights, sexual orientation, state and corporate power, economic exploitation, the environment and rights, warfare, torture, and social movements.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Precludes additional credit for FYSM 1104.
Lecture and discussion groups/tutorials three hours a week.

HUMR 2001 [0.5 credit]
Human Rights: Theories and Foundations

Historical overview of the theoretical and philosophical approaches underlying the human rights movement and relevant to the normative ideals and aspirations of human rights and to the strategies of their implementation.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): second-year standing.
Lectures and discussion groups/tutorials three hours a week.

HUMR 2102 [0.5 credit]
Sexuality, Gender, and Security

Historical and contemporary analysis of surveillance, security, and regulation of sexuality, race, class, and gender. Students will critically examine how ‘subversives’ were created through discourse and administrative logics such as policy and law.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Also listed as SXST 2102.
Prerequisite(s): second year standing or permission from the Institute.
Lectures and discussions three hours a week.

HUMR 2202 [0.5 credit]
Power Relations and Human Rights

The study of power from a critical, transnational perspective; the impact on human rights of different forms and modalities of power, including those emanating from the state and corporations and those implicated in socio-economic and other hierarchical relations.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): second-year standing.
Lectures and discussion groups/tutorials three hours a week.

HUMR 2301 [0.5 credit]
Human Rights and Sexualities

Human rights issues in various cultural contexts concerning sex and/or gender, with attention to sexual minorities such as gay, lesbian, and transgendered persons. Forms of discrimination against sexual minorities and the mechanisms and strategies for redress.
Prerequisite(s): second-year standing.
Lectures and discussion groups three hours a week.

HUMR 2401 [0.5 credit]
Political Repression

Canada is home-in-exile to many who have faced severe and often life-threatening political repression such as imprisonment, torture, surveillance, population transfer, etc. This course examines the impacts on survivors of political repression, and strategies used to overcome its legacies.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): second-year standing.
Lectures and discussion groups three hours a week.

HUMR 2502 [0.5 credit]
Social and Political Movements

The underlying conditions and developments of historical and contemporary social and political movements; specific social movements such as civil rights or gay rights.
Prerequisite(s): second-year standing.
Lectures and discussion groups three hours a week.

HUMR 3001 [0.5 credit]
Special Topics in Human Rights

This advanced seminar will cover current and topical issues and/or debates in human rights, and will enable students to engage in focused discussions and analyses of these issues. Topics will vary from year to year.
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Lectures three hours a week.

HUMR 3002 [0.5 credit]
Right to the City

“The right to the city” as an emerging focus of advocacy and analysis in urban movements for social justice around especially the local and transnational dimensions of the “right to the city” movement.
Precludes additional credit for HUMR 3001 if taken prior to 2013-14.
Prerequisite(s): third year standing.
Lectures three hours a week.

HUMR 3202 [0.5 credit]
Human Rights and Resistance

This course problematizes human rights paradigms and critically examines the limitations of the political within liberal democracies. Bringing together theory and politics, alternative approaches to activism are explored. Topics may include struggles grounded in radical democracy, anti-capitalism, and social justice perspectives.
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Lectures three hours a week.

HUMR 3301 [0.5 credit]
Racialization, Racism and Human Rights

The forms and effects of systemic race-based human rights abuses. Topics may include immigration and refugee policies and practices, anti-apartheid regimes, racial profiling, the racial politics of "nationhood" and armed conflict, civil rights and resistance movements in differing cultural contexts.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Seminar and discussion groups three hours a week.

HUMR 3302 [0.5 credit]
Culture, Religion, and Women's Human Rights

The impact of cultural and religious traditions on gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality. Topics may include debates related to power dynamics, historical issues, geopolitics, and cultural relativism.
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Lectures three hours a week.

HUMR 3303 [0.5 credit]
Children's Rights

This course examines children’s rights from a range of historical, cultural, and global perspectives. Topics may include the rights for Indigenous children, children with disabilities, female, trans and queer children, children in armed conflict and refugees in Canada and transnational contexts.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Also listed as CHST 3303.
Precludes additional credit for CHST 3901 (no longer offered).
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Lectures and discussion groups three hours a week.

HUMR 3304 [0.5 credit]
Disability Rights

A critical approach to the study of disability rights that explores the intersections of disability with race, sexuality, gender, colonialism, ‘health’, and other discourses.
Precludes additional credit for HUMR 4303 (no longer offered).
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Lecture three hours a week.

HUMR 3401 [0.5 credit]
Histories of Persecution and Genocide

Case studies in persecution and/or genocide in different cultural contexts. The social, political, and legal conditions that have enabled the institutional or state-sanctioned persecution of targeted groups, and the circumstances that had an impact on their decline.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Lectures three hours a week.

HUMR 3501 [0.5 credit]
Social, Economic and Cultural Rights

The development of social, economic and cultural rights, including rights to housing, healthcare, education and employment. Topics may include the international geopolitics of the historical tension between these rights and civil and political rights.
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Lectures three hours a week.

HUMR 3503 [0.5 credit]
Global Environmental Justice

Overview of critical debates on environmental issues from a global social justice perspective. Topics may include corporate mining, food sovereignty, poverty, economic exploitation, Indigenous cosmologies and environmental justice, militarization and environmental degradation, privatization of water and climate change.
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Lectures and discussion groups three hours a week.

HUMR 3504 [0.5 credit]
Public Health and Human Rights

Through a social-scientific analysis of AIDS, this course explores HIV/AIDS as a case study for understanding the politics of public health. Students will critically interrogate the authority of science and explore avenues for democratizing biomedicine and public health policy in various national and policy contexts.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Precludes additional credit for HUMR 3001 Section "A" if taken in 2013-14 and 2014-15.
Prerequisite(s): third-year standing.
Lectures three hours a week.

HUMR 4201 [0.5 credit]
Citizenship and Human Rights

The relationship between citizenship and human rights; how large groups of people, including non-citizens and refugees, are excluded from entitlements to rights. Why human rights rest on citizenship, and with what implications.
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing.
Seminar three hours a week.

HUMR 4302 [0.5 credit]
Transgender Human Rights

Critical analyses of human rights through an examination of transgender subjectivities. The systemic erasure of trans people within society and the struggles of some activists to normalize trans identities.
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing.
Seminar three hours a week.

HUMR 4305 [0.5 credit]
Disability and Social Justice

An intersectional national/transnational approach to social justice issues such as poverty/exploitation, labour, representation, decolonization, race/racism, sexuality and gender from a critical disability studies perspective.
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing in Human Rights or Disability Studies.
Seminar three hours a week.

HUMR 4401 [0.5 credit]
Gender, Citizenship and Social Justice in a Transnational World

This seminar critically engages with transnational, gendered, classed, and racialized discursive practices of citizenship, human rights, the geopolitics of knowledge and processes of dehumanization through the lenses of decolonial social justice.
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing.
Seminar three hours a week.

HUMR 4404 [0.5 credit]
Rights of Refugees and Displaced Persons

Contemporary issues concerning the rights of refugees and displaced persons, from social, political, and legal perspectives; Canadian and international dimensions of these issues.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing.
Seminar and discussion groups three hours a week.

HUMR 4409 [0.5 credit]
Counter-terrorism and Human Rights

Examines policies and strategies states and international organizations use to combat global terrorism and the challenges these initiatives pose to the international human rights regime, democratic norms, and social justice.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing.
Seminar three hours per week.

HUMR 4502 [0.5 credit]
Global Indigenous Knowledges and Movements

Indigenous Peoples contributions to world knowledge through community resistance, social movements and scholarship. How processes of corporate globalization impact Indigenous Peoples lives as an ongoing process of normalizing a reconfigured modern coloniality of power.
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing.
Seminar three hours a week.

HUMR 4905 [0.5 credit]
Practicum Placement in Human Rights I

This course provides students with the opportunity to spend one day per week (6-8 hours) working and learning at a human rights-related government, research or advocacy organization. A written report is required at the end of the placement. Graded as Sat/Uns.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing in Human Rights or permission of the Institute.


HUMR 4906 [0.5 credit]
Practicum Placement in Human Rights II

This course provides students with the opportunity to spend one day per week (6-8 hours) working and learning at a human rights-related government, research or advocacy organization. A written report is required at the end of the placement. Graded as Sat/Uns.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing in Human Rights and a GPA of 9.8 or higher or permission of the Institute.


HUMR 4907 [0.5 credit]
Special Topic in Human Rights

This course features a detailed study of a special topic in any area of Human Rights. Topics and themes will vary from year to year.
Prerequisite(s): fourth-year standing.
Seminar three hours a week.

HUMR 4908 [0.5 credit]
Independent Study

Essays and/or examinations based on a bibliography constructed by the student in consultation with an instructor.
Includes: Experiential Learning Activity
Prerequisite(s): normally restricted to students with at least 3.0 credits of Human Rights courses with at least a CGPA of 9.0 or better in Human Rights courses and permission of the Institute.


Summer session: some of the courses listed in this Calendar are offered during the summer. Hours and scheduling for summer session courses will differ significantly from those reported in the fall/winter Calendar. To determine the scheduling and hours for summer session classes, consult the class schedule at central.carleton.ca

Not all courses listed are offered in a given year. For an up-to-date statement of course offerings for the current session and to determine the term of offering, consult the class schedule at central.carleton.ca