Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Human Rights Film Series
Screening of The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (2005)
4 PM
Class of 47 Room, Homer Babbidge Library

Professor Emma Gilligan from the Department of History will provide a brief introduction to the film.

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (2005), directed by Pirjo Honkasalo, is an award-winning, stunningly beautiful documentary that reveals how the Chechen War has psychologically affected children in Russia and in Chechnya. Divided into three episodes or ‘rooms,’ the film is characterized by an elegantly paced, observational style. 

“A beautiful, moving, mysterious film. A prodigious, almost spiritual experience, a luminous, challenging art movie out of the Tarkovsky school that happens to be about a real war and its effects on real children. It was also a daring cinematic enterprise; while the Western media had trouble getting any independent footage from Chechnya, this Finnish art-film director took a film crew there and captured the breathtaking devastation. Put this on your must-see list!”—

Thursday, February 12, 2009

A Panel Discussion: “Documenting Peruvian History and the Visual Arts”
with presentations by:

Jose Falconi, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University

Michael Orwicz, Department of Art and Art History, UConn

Kimberly Theidon, Anthropology, Harvard University and Exectutive Director of Praxis Institute for Social Justice

The panel discussion is being held in conjunction with the exhibit, Yuyanapaq: To Remember, at the William Benton Museum of Art from January 20 – March 6, 2009

Yuyanapaq: To Remember is a witness, in words and images, to the extreme political violence that consumed the Peruvian nation between 1980 and 2000. These two decades saw an outbreak of violence that involved insurgents, state armed forces, paramilitary groups, and peasants’ self-defense organizations. It was instigated by the Maoist organization, known as “Shining Path,” and justified as a revolutionary uprising against the Peruvian state. While Shining Path rejected, in general, the idea of human rights as “bourgeois, reactionary, counterrevolutionary rights, [which] are today a weapon of revisionists and imperialists, principally Yankee imperialists,” the government likewise committed human rights violations, although fewer in number and on a lesser scale. In 2003 the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a report that estimated that 69,280 Peruvians lost their lives during this period. As part of the Truth Commission’s effort to document the history of this period and depict the ways in which violence impacted on Peruvians’ daily lives, an exhibition of 250 photographs was created from more than 90 archives belonging to different media outlets, news agencies, military institutions, human right organizations, and private collections. A traveling exhibition of 40 photographs was organized in 2004 and has been shown in Mexico, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.

CALL FOR PAPERS:  “Human Rights: Ideals and Realities”

Saturday, April 4, 2009

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT, STORRS

* DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: FEBRUARY 16, 2009 *

The second annual multidisciplinary Graduate Human Rights Conference will be held on Saturday, April 4, 2009 at the Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut. The conference aims to bring together graduate students interested in human rights, from multiple disciplines, to present and share their research interests. The conference will include a keynote address as well as complimentary breakfast and lunch.

Keynote Speaker: Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International USA and Associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Eurasian and Russian Studies. 

Panel Themes: The conference encourages interdisciplinary social science, law, and humanities approaches to understanding human rights issues. Panel themes may include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

• Economic Rights
• Education and Human Rights
• Environmental Rights
• Foundations of Human Rights
• Gender and Human Rights
• Group Rights
• Human Rights and International Law
• Humanitarianism

If you would like to present a paper, please submit the following information to the Human Rights Institute at humanrights at uconn.edu by February 6, 2009:

– YOUR FULL NAME

– INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION

– E-MAIL, POSTAL ADDRESS, and TEL. NO.

– PAPER TITLE

– 300-WORD PAPER ABSTRACT

Please feel free to contact humanrights at uconn.edu if you have any further questions regarding the conference.

The Connecticut Coalition for Human Rights is pleased to present…

Fulfilling the Promise of Human Rights: the Universal Declaration at 60

a statewide conference marking the 60^th anniversary of the UDHR

Featuring…
U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr.

Saturday, December 6^th from 8:30 to 4pm  
Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT

The CT Coalition for Human Rights is honored to have U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr. of the 14^th District of Michigan deliver the keynote address on December 6^th in honor of the 60^th Anniversary of the UDHR.  Representative Conyers has devoted 43 years in the U.S. House of Representatives for “jobs, justice and peace” for the people of Michigan’s 14^th District and the country as a whole.  He has long been a champion for civil rights as one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus and as Chairman of the pivotal House Committee on the Judiciary.  His legislative accomplishments include: the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, the Motor Voter Bill of 1993, the Martin Luther King Holiday Act of 1983, and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. 

Register now at http://www.udhr.net 

Please join the Coalition on December 6^th at Quinnipiac University to celebrate the 60^th Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and continue the statewide effort to promote and implement human rights as enshrined in the UDHR throughout Connecticut and throughout the United States. 

Organizational Sponsors of the CT Coalition for Human Rights

AFL-CIO, Albert Schweitzer Institute, Quinnipiac University; American Civil Liberties Union of CT; American Friends Service Committee; American Immigrant Lawyers Association; Amistad Committee; Amnesty International, CT; City of New Haven Peace Commission; Connecticut Bar Association, Connecticut Center for a New Economy, Connecticut Citizen Action Group; Connecticut Communist Party; Connecticut Education Association; Connecticut Federation of Teachers; Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty; Connecticut Permanent Commission on the Status of Women; Connecticut State Conference – American Association of University Professors; Connecticut United for Peace; Connecticut Women’s Educational and Legal Fund; Eastern Coalition for Peace and Justice;  Greater Hartford Coalition on Cuba; Greater New Haven Central Labor Council; Greater New Haven Peace Council; Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut; Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services; Love 146; Love Makes a Family; NAACP-New Haven; National Association of Social Workers; National Organization for Women; Northeast Connecticut for Peace & Justice; Pax Educare; Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, Promoting an Enduring Peace; Third Sector New England; Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut; United Nations Association, CT Division; Vecinos Unidos; We Refuse to Be Enemies; Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom

For more information about the CT Coalition for Human Rights please visit http://www.udhr.net or email rebecca.lenn@ppct.org.

Zakes Mda, a South African novelist and playwright, will give the Visiting Gladstein Professor of Human Rights Annual Lecture on “The Fiction of Reconciliation.”

4 pm at Konover Auditorium

Thomas J. Dodd Research Center  

A reception will follow

Dear All,

My apologies for the delay in updates, but there has been a flurry of activity lately with the start of the academic year and little time left for writing!

Here is a brief update:

The UConn Libraries are currently revising their strategic plan, so if you have comments about ways in which the library can improve, things you like, things you don’t like, please let us know!  Feel free to leave your comments here on this blog!

Also, the Human Rights Film Series is kicking off this week!  The 2008-2009 theme is, “A Cinematic Exploration through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” in celebration of the 60th Annivesary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948-2008

The film series is sponsored by the Human Rights Initiative

Text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Film Series Poster (Adobe PDF; 148 KB)

All films are free, open to the public, and held at 4:00 pm in the Konover Auditorium at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Article 1: Freedom and Dignity

Film: The Kite Runner (2007)

Chronicles the lives of two boys, Amir & Hassan, in a divided Afghanistan on the verge of war.

For more information, go to the Dodd Center’s website, or see the film series’s Facebook page.