Courses in Civil and Human Rights
Whether you are enrolled in a Klau Institute program or looking to round out another area of study, these courses will help you explore civil and human rights as a cornerstone of your Notre Dame education.
Learn about the Klau Institute Minor
Courses for Fall 2025
CHR 20228: Social Inequality and American Education
Amy Langenkamp
TTh 12:30–1:45 p.m.
Many have claimed that the American educational system is the "great equalizer." In other words, the educational system gives everyone a chance to prosper in American society regardless of their social origins. In this course, we will explore the validity of this claim. We will consider questions such as: 1) Does our educational system promote social mobility or social reproduction? 2) How has the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational performance changed in the last few decades? 3) How do social class and gender shape the kinds of educational experiences students have? 4) How does educational policy influence the kinds of experiences kids have in school? Can policy reduce inequality?
CHR 30141: Migrants and Mobility in the Age of Mass Movement
Rose Luminiello
TTh 3:30–4:45 p.m.
This course examines the origins and development of contemporary opinions and policies concerning migrations and migrants. It does so by looking backward to the age when transoceanic mobility became more frequent and increasingly more accessible before moving forward to our own times. It is the central claim of this course that it is impossible to understand what drives policy today without first surveying the changing ideas of migration and the movement of people over time. It will therefore take students through the history of migration in the modern world, as well as studying the migrant journey, connections to home, the process and difficulties of assimilation and community creation, and the problems or opportunities that could arise for migrants from characteristics like race, religion, ethnicity, or language. Also considered will be the complex relationship between colonization and migration. In the process, Migrants and Mobility will also examine how different societies place value judgments upon migrants and analyze how and why migration/migrants have been categorized as “good” or “bad” over time. Students will also encounter and consider the effects of growing urbanization and industrialization, changing demography and global trade patterns, and, more recently, the impact of climate change. Migrants and Mobility will be primarily seminar based, placing a premium on participation and analytical discussion.
CHR 30708: International Law and Human Rights
Diane Desierto
MW 2:00–3:15 p.m.
What role does international law have in the advancement of human rights, and how does human rights, in turn, advance international law? This course introduces university students to the general system of modern international law (e.g. its norm-generating framework involving States and non-State actors; the roles of many State and non-State authoritative decision-makers in shaping expectations of peaceful, just, and responsible behavior in the international system; its varied constellation of dispute settlement courts and tribunals, alongside the prospects and limits of enforcing State compliance with international decisions), specifically viewed from the lens of historic global, regional, and domestic challenges to human dignity that influenced the first global codification of human rights norms under the United Nations' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, up to the present development of the current international system of protection for human rights. The course situates the framework of modern international law and civil, political, economic, social, and cultural human rights, using five examples of the historic, defining, and 'constitutionalizing moments' for the international system: 1) the international abolition of slavery; 2) the evolution from classical to modern international law in dismantling colonial empires to enshrine the self-determination of all peoples and the equality of sovereignty of all nations; 3) the outlawing of the aggressive use of force since 1929, towards the peaceful settlement of maritime and territorial disputes and the humanitarian rules applicable to armed conflict situations; 4) the establishment of international accountability of individuals and States for genocide, crimes against humanity and other human rights atrocities; and 5) the global regulation for sustainable use, shared protection, and intergenerational responsibility over natural resources (land, oceans, atmosphere, outer space).
CHR 30709: Race & Ethnicity in the United States: Social Constructs with Real World Consequences
Steven Alvarado
MW 2:00–3:15 p.m.
We are living through a watershed moment in United States history. Structural racism is at the forefront of the national discourse. Yet, the threat that racism holds on our nation's most cherished ideals of democracy and justice is hardly new. Generations of activists, scholars, and everyday people have fought and persevered to bring about social, cultural, and policy change. This course engages deeply with topics relevant to the national discourse on racial and ethnic relations in the U.S. The first part of the course examines key concepts, focusing on the social construction of race and ethnicity, prejudice, and discrimination. The second part reviews the historical experiences of Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans. The third and final part of the course centers on four critical issues that are especially relevant in 2020: (1) immigration; (2) political disenfranchisement; (3) racial and ethnic disparities in health; and (4) racism in the criminal justice system.
CHR 30719: Human Trafficking Policy
Cory Smith
TTh 2:00–3:15 p.m.
The course will examine U.S. policies and practices to combat human trafficking including how U.S. policies advance the prevention of trafficking in persons, the protection of victims and survivors and the punishment of perpetrators as a foreign policy objective of the U.S. Students will develop a basic understanding of the various aspects of and perspectives in human trafficking including domestic and international law; foreign nationals and United States Citizens; victim services, survivor aftercare and law enforcement and sex and labor trafficking. Students will also analyze international trafficking prohibitions under the various international conventions and identify current trafficking issues in the United States, with a particular focus on commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor and involuntary servitude and the range of remedies available when rights have been violated. Finally, students will identify gaps in existing remedies and formulate policies to address them.
CHR 30721: US Civil Rights in History and Law
William Tobin
MW 3:30–4:45 p.m.
Civil Rights in the US is a living tradition that students can both understand and engage with. This course traces the non-linear, contested and ongoing history of Civil Rights in the US from the founding period to the present. It employs the perspectives of a lawyer and historian to illustrate how: the Civil War and the end of slavery made Civil Rights in the US possible, international human rights and Civil Rights in the US have interacted over time; the complicated relationship between the definition of Civil Rights and the realization of these rights played out over time, and the tensions between the federal government and the states continue to shape Civil Rights down to the present. The course is structured around three key historical periods in which Civil Rights in the US developed and the divisive legacy of these periods of possibility: The Founding and Constitutional period 1776-1790, Civil War and Reconstruction, 1863-1883 and the Civil Rights Era 1945-1991. Through an examination of social movements, Supreme Court cases, and congressional action the course illustrates how the meaning of citizenship and civil rights, who constituted a citizen, and what institutions—state and local government, private individuals, and so on—posed the biggest threat to equal treatment under the law changed over time. Finally, the course provides opportunities for students to actively participate in the US Civil Rights tradition.
CHR 30725: God & Slavery in the Americas
David Lantigua
TTh 3:30–4:45 p.m.
More than a century before African slaves were trafficked to the Virginia colony in 1619, Christopher Columbus transported captured indigenous peoples to Spain from the New World. The dispossession and enslavement of non-Europeans in the colonization of the Americas was justified by Christians but also condemned by Christians with different economic and political interests. This development course in theology introduces students to the challenging intersection of faith, slavery, and freedom by exploring key figures, events, and movements that have shaped the complex historical legacy of Christianity in the Americas, a hemispheric past that remains ever bound together. In addition to Christianity's role in colonial expansion and racial ideology, the course especially considers how lived faith in God provided a catalyst for the empowerment and resistance of the oppressed and their advocates in shared struggles to attain greater social justice, racial equality, and political autonomy. From the "Protector of the Indians" Bartolomé de las Casas to César Chávez, and the "Black Moses" Harriet Tubman to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the course explores these and other extraordinary figures of hope in the Americas who gave their lives to protest social violence and promote authentic expressions of faith. In the course, students will engage this turbulent past through a contextual approach to theology that examines idolatry, migration, land, liberty, poverty, social sin, nonviolence, and solidarity as normative categories relevant for addressing contemporary social crises afflicting our nation and earth.
CHR 30739: Disability in American History and Culture
Laurel Daen
TTh 12:30–1:45 p.m.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 26% of Americans (about 61 million people) have a disability—a physical, intellectual, sensory, or self-care impediment that affects major life activities. This course considers this population, their stories and experiences, as well as how disability—as a social, cultural, legal, and political construct—has shaped the nation and its history. A particular focus of the course will be on disability and social justice. Throughout American history, and still today, disabled people have been excluded from basic civil rights, such as voting, marrying, holding property, and living independently. This course will examine how these restrictions developed and changed over time as well as how disabled people have fought for greater access and equality. Coursework may include response papers, primary source analysis, and a final project.
CHR 30742: Immigrant America
Jennifer Huynh
MW 2:00–3:15 p.m.
Nearly one in four people is an immigrant or child of immigrants in the United States. This course critically examines what it means to be an immigrant or child of immigrants through interdisciplinary sources, including memoirs, blogs, art, and popular journalism. Since the liberalization of immigration policy in 1965, immigrants from Latin America and Asia are becoming an increasing and emergent demographic of American society. In major American cities such as Los Angeles and New York, they comprise over 50% of the population. This course focuses on how immigrants and the children of immigrants experience the United States. How are immigrants changing the US racial and ethnic structure? How do their experiences differ, given varying legal statuses? How is the second generation becoming American? We will explore these questions through family, media representation, religion, education, dating, and sexuality. Students will participate in a service-learning opportunity related to migration and social justice and learn skills in quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Service learning will be 2-3 hours outside of class each week.
CHR 30745: Colonial Latin America
Karen Graubart
TTh 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
When Columbus stepped ashore in the Caribbean in 1492, he set in motion a process that led to the creation of wealthy Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas, the genocide of countless numbers of indigenous men and women, the enslavement of millions of African men and women, and the eventual formation of a variety of independent states competing in the world economy. In this semester-long survey, we will examine topics in this history that will allow us to consider how history is produced as well as what happened in the past, from various perspectives, from elite colonial administrators and merchants to indigenous peasants and formerly enslaved men and women.
CHR 30747: Indigenous Cinema
Ashlee Bird
TTh 2:00–3:15 p.m.
This course will examine the global field of Indigenous Cinema. This class will utilize screenings of Indigenous film along with accompanying lecture, reading, and discussion, to examine the ways in which Indigenous filmmakers, actors, and communities are subverting genre and decolonizing the industry to tell and reclaim Indigenous stories and make room for Indigenous futures.
CHR 30748: Human Rights Reparations: R&D
Anibal Perez-Linan
TTh 9:30–10:45 a.m.
Under what conditions do governments comply with international norms? How can international courts secure respect for their orders? Because international courts lack effective means of enforcement, governments often defy their rulings. We will analyze why governments adhere to court orders and how international bodies can become more effective. We will also introduce advanced methodological tools to analyze and predict compliance. Students in the seminar will have the opportunity to participate in research projects integrated to the Notre Dame Reparations Design and Compliance Lab (NDRL). Participants will be able to use the tools acquired in the course to analyze compliance with the rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the World Bank Inspection Panel, and other international bodies.
CHR 30759: Mass Incarceration Research Lab
Samuel Sokolsky-Tifft
W 6:00–8:30 p.m.
This research lab will employ an interdisciplinary approach to research on a range of issues related to mass incarceration. Collaborating with faculty, scholars, activists, practitioners, those impacted by systems of incarceration, and other classmates, students will develop, refine and implement a research project which contributes to the overall body of scholarship on incarceration. Students will be able to design projects (exploring moral, normative, and/or empirical etc. dimensions of incarceration) which connect their own academic and intellectual interests to emerging research questions at the Institute for Social Concerns. This research lab is open to students in all disciplines.
CHR 30760: US Operations in Central America and the Caribbean
Jaime Pensado
TTh 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
The most influential voices in the United States today—including those working in media outlets (i.e., CNN, FOX, MSNBC), the entertainment industry (i.e., Hollywood and Netflix), and the government (i.e., senators and governors)—overwhelmingly describe the countries of Central America and the Caribbean as “unruly”, “violent”, and unilaterally “impoverished.” Not too different from those given by their counterparts during the 19th century, these descriptions have been primarily framed in relation to the “tropics,” an “imagined region” of the world composed of “banana republics”, as we will discuss in this class, that always seemed to be far from the benefits of “modernity” and the advances of “Western civilization.” But in complicating these vague, misleading, and treacherous descriptions of the broader Latin American region, students will also be presented with the opportunity to explore a variety of challenges that ordinary Latin Americans face today, from a historical perspective. For example, in discussing the roots and long-term effects of modernization theory and military interventions, students will explore why Haitians and Hondurans, but not necessarily Costa Ricans, have left their respective countries in massive numbers. In comparative cases, they will also learn why ordinary people in El Salvador have welcomed a ruthless government of “law and order”; why their neighbors in Guatemala have instead looked for a populist leftist leader to demand justice and greater democracy; why Nicaragua has betrayed a once egalitarian revolution with a totalitarian regime; and why Puerto Rico has failed to protect its “citizens” from environmental and health disasters, and in comparison, why socialist Cuba has fared better in these regards, but has otherwise silenced those who criticize the ruling elite and has often been accused in international courts of violating human rights. Finally, as further points of contrast, students will learn why liberal and conservative politicians at times welcomed the presence of US foreign agents in their respective countries and why American politicians at times joined cautionary forces with their counterparts in Israel, France, and Argentina in combating the long Cold War in Central America and the Caribbean. In providing historical context to these and other questions (that I further detailed below), this course will introduce students to the ambivalent and often complicated relationship(s) between the United States and its neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean, from the early 19th century to the present.
CHR 30761: The Indigenous Southwest
Donna Glowacki
TTh 3:30–4:45 p.m.
This course seeks to explore connections between environment and culture change by introducing students to the diversity of cultures living in the Southwest. We begin by learning about indigenous people living in the Southwest today including the Pueblo peoples (e.g., Hopi, Zuni, Santa Clara, Cochiti, Acoma), Navajo, Ute, and Tohono O’odham using ethnography and contemporary native histories. We will then travel back in time to learn about the complex histories of these people, particularly the ancestral Pueblo, to places like Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, the Rio Grande, the Mimbres Valley, and the Phoenix Basin. Our explorations will cover from the earliest Paleoindians (11,500 years ago) to the 13th century Migrations to European contact, the establishment of Spanish Missions, and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680-1692. We will then bring this discussion full circle to today. Along the way, we will explore the impact of large-scale, long-term processes such as the adoption of agriculture, village formation, religious change, migration, and warfare on the rich historical landscape of the Southwest.
CHR 30762: The World in Rome: Pathways of Migration and Citizenship
Maurizio Albahari
MW 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
How and why do some of the roads taken by migrants (including refugees) lead to Rome and Italy? What are the challenges faced by migrants upon their arrival, and on their path to citizenship? How does civil society intervene to mitigate those challenges, and to facilitate mutual integration and engagement? What are the distinctive features of Roman lay and Catholic approaches to migration? The course addresses such questions, building on contemporary Rome both as a compelling case study and as a gateway to the causes, lived experiences, and consequences of global migrations. Students investigate how the experience of the city is at the same time the experience of globalization, embodied in older and new residents’ everyday life in the built environment; and they appreciate situated social engagement and its potentialities. The course builds on anthropology as a holistic social science, and it attends to migration- related aesthetics (e.g., art, movies) and Catholic Social Teachings that prove extremely salient in Rome. Attention to the realities of the host civil society is fundamental: migrants’ reception and integration happens at the local, neighborhood level and in interaction with residents and larger communities. This indispensable attention to Roman realities, together with scholarly accounts from regions of migrant origin and transit, enables students to ground their knowledge in local, Italian, historical, and Euro-Mediterranean contexts. Thus, the course does not impart a collection of facts about immigrants as insular entities, but provides entry points into some of the patterns accounting for global migrations; the lived experience of international borders; the interplay of sovereignty, democracy, citizenship, colonialism, decolonization, racialization, and human rights; the relationship between Islam, Catholicism, and the gendered public sphere; human smuggling; and the emotional, ethical, and embodied aspects of migration and of civic engagement.
CHR 30763: Catholicism and the Struggle for Human Dignity: A Global Survey
Scott Appleby
MW 2:00–3:15 p.m.
A total of approximately 1.4 billion Catholics are found in virtually every country in the world. Since the 1960s their global religious community, the Roman Catholic Church, has embraced the mission of advancing integral human development as a comprehensive approach to Catholicism's commitment to upholding the God-given dignity of every person, regardless of race, religion, creed or any other marker of identity.
CHR 30765: Human Rights, Supply Chains and Power
TTh 2:00–3:15 p.m.
How do human rights intersect with trade in today’s globalized world? To answer this question, this course explores concrete, recent examples from Europe’s “fast-fashion-crazed” garment industry, which manufactures clothing, accessories, and home furnishings. Together we tackle key topics – such as living wages, workers’ right to organize, and forced overtime – and evaluate the root causes of endemic violations. How are these linked to the way global supply chains are structured? What steps have been taken so far to redress the power structures that undergird injustice in supply chains around the world? And what solutions are still needed, especially in light of increased climate change risks and automation? Through seminar discussions, workshops and guest lectures by practitioners from Europe, this course equips students with the tools to calculate the cost of human rights as part of a product’s price and to spot the differences between ‘greenwashing’ and authentic efforts for change.
