Journalism of War, Revolution, Genocide, and Human Rights

Catalog description

In this seminar we will read some of the key journalistic works on war, revolution, genocide, and human rights that have been written in the past one hundred years. We will attempt to answer such questions as: How, and why, has the nature of war changed in the past century? Why do some revolutions, such as those in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, largely succeed, while others, such as those of the Arab Spring, fail so miserably? How do we understand senseless, sadistic violence—what Primo Levi called “useless cruelty”? Why do sufferers of violence and oppression so often become perpetrators of it? What is the difference between war and genocide, and why did the latter emerge in the 20th century? Why has terrorism re-emerged with such vengeance in the past two decades? What are “human rights”—another invention of the 20th century—and how, if at all, have they become a reality?