79-166 Women and the World: Beyond the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1914-2016
9 units, Carnegie Mellon University
When the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, it marked a new era in international relations and a new standard of global citizenship. This course focuses on the intense drafting and adoption process for the document, the decades of fighting, lobbying, and negotiations that preceded it, and the successes and disappointments that accompanied the declaration and similar UN proclamations. In particular, this course centers women's roles in this process. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, as Chair of the Commission on Human Rights which drafted the Declaration, will obviously be a main character. But students will also learn about the other women who took center stage during the eventful and dynamic interwar years and beyond - Black internationalists, nurses and Red Cross coordinators, peace activists from around the globe, and isolationists who opposed the very idea of the UN. These women populated a constellation of actors who promoted and contested the construction of institutions for world governance. To understand this process, we will trace the creation of internationalist and isolationist foreign policy circles; and examine the consequences of the many crises of the interwar period on the actors who comprised such circles. By studying the creation and maintenance of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, students will learn how ideas of world government, citizenship, and diplomacy have dominated and been challenged in American life, implicating a host of sectors, including education, public policy, law, racial justice, and international relations.
Prerequisites: none listed
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