Spring 2007 International Studies Program Seminar:

REFUGEES IN AN AGE OF CATASTROPHE

 

 

Note: Links to many of the readings are provided below. However, to access some of the electronic journal articles, you will need to either use a computer on the UIC campus, or first access UIC's electronic library and search for the articles from there. You will open the Library Electronic Resources page, and select the journal the article is in (either JSTOR or Project Muse). You will then have to search for the article using the author's name and/or article title.

Weekly Assignments

January 17
Introductions

 

January 24 
Definitions, History, Analysis

USCRI World Refugee Survey, "Statistics"

Liisa Malkki, Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 1995, 24:495-523.  (At JSTOR)

Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo, Chap. 1.

 

January 31
Crime of Genocide

Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell," chaps. 1-5.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes of Genocide

Film Screening:  The Long Way Home.

 

Febuary 7 
Cambodian Refugees, Killing Fields, Camps, Boats and Memories

Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell," chap. 6.

Class Visitors:  Kompah Seth from Cambodian American Heritage Museum.

Film Screening:  “The Killing Fields” (1984)  Directed by Roland Joffe. (Screening place and time tba)
Visit the Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial website.

 

February 14
Bosnia-Herzegovina: Live and Memories of the End of the Cold War

Samantha Power, "A Problem From Hell," chaps. 9, 11, 12.

Richard Black, "Return and Reconstruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina:  Missing Link, or Mistaken Priority," SAIS, Summer/Fall 2001. (At Project Muse)

 

February 21  
Focus on Rwanda

Samantha Power, "A Problem From Hell" chap. 10

Rene Lemarchand, Genocide in the Great Lakes: Which Genocide? Whose Genocide?” African Studies Review, 1998, 41(1):3-16.(At JSTOR).

Film Screening: time and place tba. Sometimes in April, by Raoul Peck. (140 mins)

Further Readings:
Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: the Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.  Carroll and Graf, 2005.
Paul Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Guiroux, 1998.
Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda.  Princeton University Press,  2002.
Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis:  History of a Genocide. Columbia University Press, 1997.

 

Febuary 28 
Encampment

Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees, chaps. 2-7.

 

March 7
Exile

Caroline Moorhead, Human Cargo, chaps. 9-11.

Leo Spitzer, "Persistent Memory: Central European Refugees in an Andean Land," Poetics Today. 17.4 (1996) 617-638. JSTOR link.

Laleh Khalili, "Places of Memory and Mourning: Palestinian Commemoration in the Refugee of Lebanon," Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 25.1 (2005) 30-45. Project Muse link.

 

March 8
*Refugee Issues Panel Discussion at Immigration Conference.  Details tba. (Extra Credit)

 

 March 15
A Woman’s Story of Torture and Detention

Faiziya Kassindja, Do They Hear You When You Cry? First half.

 

March 21
Fighting for Asylum

Faiziya Kassindja, Do They Hear You When You Cry? Second half of book.

Class Visitor: Professor Cassandra Veney will visit the class.

Papers are Due

 

March 28
Spring Break

 

April 4
Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV), War and Encampment

"Sexual Violence and Its Consequences among Displaced Persons in Darfur and Chad" a Human Rights Watch briefing paper, April 12, 2005.

Asma Halim, "Attack with a Friendly Weapon" in Meredith Turshen & Clotilde Twagiramariya, What Women Do In Wartime: Gender and Conflict in Africa.  New York: ZED Books, 1998. (RP). Download PDF, 1.03 MB

Roberta Cohen, "What’s So Terrible About Rape?" SAIS Review, Summer-Fall 2001. Project Muse Link.

UNIFEM, "Women, War, Peace and Displacement"

UNHCR, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Against Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons.  Guidelines for Prevention and Response.  May 2003. 

 

April 11
Lost Boys of Sudan

Mark Bixler, Lost Boys of Sudan.

"Lost Children of Sudan," Parts 1-4 at www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/1076

Sudan's "Lost Girls" fear repatriation after peace deal: UN Official Sudan Tribune online, September 17, 2005. 

 

April 18
U.S. Refugee Policy
Reading tba.

 

April 25
Refugee Rights and Human Rights Laws (Each student should select one law to present)

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Convention

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

UN Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment

UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

African [Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights

African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, Rules of Procedure

American Convention on Human Rights

European Convention on Human Rights

European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment

American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man

 

May 2
Class Party and Final Paper Reports.

 

 

 

Professor Lynette A. Jackson
Gender and Women's Studies Program (MC 360)
Suite 1230, University Hall
601 South Morgan Street
Chicago, Illinois 60607-7107