Class name: “Human Rights: Culture, Language, and Power”
Taught by: Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Visual Studies Zeynep Sertbulut
What Sertbulut has to say about her class:
This course offers an overview of the human rights system, focusing on the intersections of culture, language, and power. At the heart of this course is the question of “culture” and its relation to human rights. Human rights campaigns frequently encounter resistance in the name of protecting cultural differences. This is particularly common with issues concerning women, children, and the family.
Our central question is: How does the global human rights system navigate the tension between universal principles and local cultural practices? This question is particularly important when discussing linguistic and cultural rights, as well as issues we cover, like gender violence, Indigenous rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and the treatment of migrants and refugees.
We explore key questions about how global human rights are appropriated and translated in various cultural contexts, how specific issues become recognized or fail to become recognized as human rights violations, and how language access impacts efforts toward social justice. Through analyses of legal documents, films, a guest speaker series, case studies, first-person accounts, and the work of legal scholars, linguists, and anthropologists, we will examine much-debated issues in the human rights system, such as female genital cutting, honor killing, LGBTQ+ rights, and Indigenous people’s rights to language and culture. Using these examples, we will consider how the human rights system deals with political and conceptual tensions between global standards and local ways of life.
By the end of this course, students will gain a deeper understanding of how language and culture shape power, inclusion, and exclusion in human rights discourse and global justice efforts. They will be equipped to engage in discussions and advocacy efforts with a more nuanced appreciation of the role of language in global justice. They will also gain practical experience applying these concepts in their final group project, helping to raise awareness and advocate for linguistic rights in real-world contexts through creating multimedia advocacy resources.
Sertbulut on why she wanted to teach this class:
I am trained as a media and legal anthropologist and also have expertise in linguistic anthropology. This course excites me because it gives me an opportunity to combine my background in the anthropology of law and politics of representation with my passion for linguistic anthropology. When Haverford’s Together with Humanities initiative expressed interest in a course that combines the anthropological study of human rights with language, I became motivated to create this course.
Language plays a critical role in shaping legal and political systems, influencing who has access to justice, education, and full participation in society. This course gives us an opportunity to explore in detail the role of language in global human rights debates and social justice campaigns from various angles.
Sertbulut on what makes this class unique:
This is the only course in our department focusing primarily on language and counts as a language elective at Haverford. It is also conducted in collaboration with other scholars, practitioners, and activists who attend as guest lecturers. Students receive hands-on digital and multimedia training for their final projects from Digital Scholarship Librarian Anna Lacy and Digital Media Specialist Charles Woodard. Finally, it is conducted in collaboration with the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship (CPGC), which helps disseminate students’ final projects — multimedia advocacy resources documenting ESL communities’ experiences navigating human rights law.
In collaboration with the CPGC, I am also organizing a spring panel, “Extending Lives in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora: State, Civil Society, and Language,” which will address the importance of linguistic proficiencies and localized insights into human rights work as it relates to Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora. In addition to our guest lecture series, which includes scholars, human rights activists, and NGO personnel, this panel will give the students another opportunity to engage with human rights scholars beyond the classroom.