Human Rights and Social Justice (HRSJ) Courses
Sexuality, Gender and Social Justice
Draws on sexuality studies, Trans studies and other interdisciplinary fields of critical scholarship to analyse sex, gender and sexuality as governing relations, their intersection with other systemic power relations (e.g. colonialism, capitalism), and resistance efforts grounded in social justice politics.
Critical Race Theory
Discourses of global racism against Black, Indigenous, and people of colour; ongoing colonization, social criminalization, and gendered and racialized immigration policies examined from grounded theory and practice of anti-racist work.
Narratives of Human Rights
Ways in which literature and other narrative modes (media, memoir, documentary, film, art, music) engage with the political landscapes around issues of human rights and social justice; the role of these narratives in representation, spectatorship, and power.
Critical Epidemiology and Human Rights
How social inequality and rights abrogation can worsen the spread and impact of disease epidemics, and how social justice and rights promotion can mitigate.
Terrorism and Islamophobia
Post-9/11 Islamophobia in the West and resulting human rights concerns around issues of terrorism, surveillance, exclusion, and anti-immigrant sentiments. Political contexts at play in the social construction of terrorism through popular media and language.
Global Indigenous Knowledges
Indigenous Peoples' contributions to world knowledges through community resistance and resurgence, social movements, community arts, and scholarship. How colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy normalize plundering, dispossession and epistemic violence and impact Indigenous and non-human life.
Social and Environmental Justice
Global, domestic and international socioenvironmental issues examined through perspectives of anti-colonial, decolonial justice and grassroots praxis. Topics may include corporate mining, food sovereignty, environmental violence(s), green capitalism, Indigenous feminisms, and climate injustices.
Citizenship and Political Violence
How political violence produces, destabilizes, and transforms various regimes of citizenship, including formal citizenship and socio-cultural conceptions legitimating group membership. Legal, socio-cultural, and spatial practices of making and unmaking citizens in the execution of political violence.
Global Labour Justice
Exploration of the changing world of labor with a focus on workers’ struggles and the neoliberal assault on the global working class; the conjoining struggles of global north and south workers and their quest for social justice and self-determination.
Global Childhoods
Investigation of the political, economic, health, and social experiences of childhood and youth as a global community and as producers of knowledge in context of settler colonial structures. Topics may include global migration, climate crisis, education, labour, political violence, health, community practices, and accessibility.
Critical Approaches to Human Rights and Social Justice
Selected topics related to anti-colonial/decolonial scholarship aimed to dismantle and destabilize conceptualizations of human rights and social justice discourses. This seminar examines knowledges that resist legalistic ideals of human rights and social justice in their struggle towards transformative justice and politics.
Critical Methodologies in Human Rights and Social Justice
Methodologies and epistemologies related to research practices grounded in anti-colonial and decolonial knowledge, theories, and methods. Students may be asked to apply these acquired skills to conduct research in the field and communities.
Practicum
Grounded in experiential learning principles and community engagement practices, students work with partnering institutions and organizations or social justice initiatives and movements to situate their scholastic knowledge of rights-based advocacy and struggles to achieve social justice. Graded SAT/UNS.
Research Essay
Examination of an approved topic in an area of specialization of either the Institute faculty or associated faculty from across the University. Students will have a supervisor and a second reader.
Thesis
Directed Studies
Directed study on selected topics may be arranged with a faculty member or visiting scholar with permission of the Institute.
Note: 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.
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