Organized by Ron Krabill (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UWB), Bruce Kochis (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UWB), and Greg Mullins

Human Rights Public Culture (HRPC) is a collaborative research, teaching, and public engagement project involving faculty, staff, and students at three campuses: UW Bothell, UW Seattle, and The Evergreen State College. Approaching Washington State as a nexus, the project foregrounds both the human rights of state residents and the human rights energies produced here in support of international human rights. As a project, HRPC aims to

• foster creative and critical engagements with human rights
• connect scholarship, education, and activism on our campuses with public events, community partnerships, and web resources
• widen public knowledge, debate, and discussion of human rights
• develop digital resources that support participatory human rights scholarship and education

In support of these aims, HRPC members engage in and imagine a wide range of activities, including:

• partnerships with K-12, museum, and community-based educators
• dialogues extended through human rights exhibits, film festivals, and events
• participatory research among community members, local organizations, undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty

Still in its initial stages, the project is informed by these guiding questions:

1) How can university-based researchers, educators, and activists better collaborate with other human rights workers to meet existing needs for human rights resources?

2) What does a cultural perspective on human rights reveal? How does cultural production in literature, art, and film figure in human rights struggles? How is our own culture shaped by human rights?

3) How can human rights communities and projects best use emerging digital technologies? How might new media transform human rights research, education, and activism both locally and globally?

For more information about HRPC, visit http://humanrightsnw.wetpaint.com/. 

To join meetings and online groups, contact Bruce Kochis at bkochis@uwb.edu.

Workshop on Human Rights Project Development
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
10:00am -12:00 noon
Communications 202

As UW endeavors  to create a human rights center and a digital human rights resource, we invite Thomas Keenan, Director of the Human Rights Project at Bard College, will to share his experiences on 1) building lasting relationships with human rights organizations and partnering universities; 2) the potential tension between research and advocacy; 3) fostering undergraduate research and internships; 4) mission statements and names (“program” vs. “project”); and 5) building institutions vs. building networks of collaborative energies. Register Online

Workshop on Old Media/New Media and Human Rights
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
1:00-3:00 pm
Communications 202

Thomas Keenan—who has served on the boards of WITNESS and the Soros Documentary Fund, and as videoarchivist of the Slobadan Milosevic trial—leads a consideration of current media trends in human rights work. We will focus on questions such as: 1) when is the speed of new media helpful, and when a constraint? 2) what are the best uses of web 2.0 participatory functionalities, and 3) how might an organization create a foundation upon which a wide range of groups and individuals collectively build a useful human rights new media resource? Register Online

Tidying Up: Reflections on the Ambiguities of Humanitarianism and Politics
Thomas Keenan
Comparative Literature, Bard Tuesday, May 26, 2009 7:00 pm Communications 120

In the poem “The End and the Beginning,” Wislawa Szymborska writes: After every war someone has to tidy up. Things won’t pick themselves up, after all. Thomas Keenan proposes that this and related poems sharpen our capacity to focus on the ambiguous and contradictory practices we designate as humanitarian. How might we describe the different projects of humanitarianism? How and when do humanitarian projects get articulated as political interventions? If sectors of Médecins Sans Frontières bear witness to atrocity, rather than merely providing medical assistance, which frontier of politics have they crossed?

Thomas Keenan is Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Human Rights Project at Bard College. Keenan is the author of Fables of Responsibility (1997) and coeditor with Wendy Hui Kyong Chun of the collection New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (2006). He has authored numerous prominent essays on the cluster of topics surrounding human rights, ethics, literature, and new media.

MACS Film Curriculum Project:

Students in the Masters of Arts in Cultural Studies program at UW Bothell are working on civic engagement pedagogy around a wide variety of films. These activities are meant for educators and facilitators who want to use film as a tool to transform and educate in the classroom and anywhere else where people gather to watch films. As part of our pilot project, we are partnering with Human Rights NW and the Seattle Human Rights Film Festival to build spaces for dialog around films that bring up human rights issues. See http://macsfp.wetpaint.com/.

Seattle Human Rights Film Festival:

Members of the Human Rights Public Culture project are also involved in organizing the annual Seattle Human Rights Film Festival (SHRFF). Sponsored by Amnesty International, SHRFF celebrates the invaluable contribution filmmakers offer to raising public awareness and understanding of often overlooked human rights issues. Since 1992, SHRFF has brought some of the world's most thought-provoking films to our community, covering critical issues that face us as global citizens. Through scenes of despair, death and destruction, themes of survival, compassion and hope emerge. See www.shrff.org.

Teachers as Scholars:

The Human Rights Public Culture project has partnered with The UW Simpson Center for the Humanities Teachers as Scholars (TAS) program to focus on human rights pedagogy for K-12 teachers. TAS is a professional development program designed to ignite and sustain the intellectual interests of K-12 teachers. It joins primary and secondary school teachers with university faculty in an educational environment that enriches the teaching and learning of both groups. See www.lectures.org/tas.html .