This graduate course examines German Jewish literature and human rights-related essays as both artistic expression and a form of public debate. We will focus on specific characteristics of German Jewish literature and essayistic writing from around 1700 to the present and explore human rights scholarship that engages with literature, theater, and media.
Many of these texts engage questions of social justice and economic rights, citizenship, complex cultural identities and social recognition, religious freedom, freedom of expression, asylum and refugee rights, responses to genocide and discrimination, the complex relationship for many authors to Judaism, as well as the changing historical evolutions of German-speaking states.
From a theoretical perspective, the goal of this course is to understand literature’s engagement with human rights discourse writ large, and the possibility of interventions in the public sphere. In addition to primary texts, we will discuss theoretical scholarship on human rights to better understand the various ways of thinking about human rights in modernity.
The class is crosslisted as GERM/CLCS/HEJS 5355 and approved as an elective for the Graduate Certificate in Human Rights and is taught in English.
To enroll, visit https://classes.uconn.edu/?details&srcdb=1268&crn=12292
For more information, contact: Prof. Sebastian Wogenstein at sebastian.wogenstein@uconn.edu