The virtual human rights library brings together resources from multiple libraries and information services, both internal and external, to create an online hub dedicated to the study of human rights. This curation is unique in its interdisciplinary concerns and focuses on writings and research from social sciences, humanities, and law.
The virtual library is continually updated with the latest academic research in issue areas, as well as with relevant films, recorded conversations, and other forms of media.
Searchable Database
Click into the dropdowns to select the disciplines, keywords, and media type for your search, and then hit "Apply."
Sumit Guha History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000 (University of Washington Press, 2019)
In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian past, Sumit Guha discusses the shaping of social and historical memory in world-historical context. He presents memory as the result of both remembering and forgetting and of the preservation, recovery...
James Q. Whitman Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton University Press, 2018)
Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman presents...
William Shaw Human Rights in Korea: Historical and Policy Perspectives (Harvard University Press, 1991)
These chapters by eight Korea specialists present a new approach to human rights issues in Korea. Instead of using an external and purely contemporary standard, the authors work from within Korean history, treating the successive phases of Korea’s modern century...
Julie Billaud Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the plight of Afghan women under Taliban rule was widely publicized in the United States as one of the humanitarian issues justifying intervention. Kabul Carnival explores the contradictions, ambiguities, and unintended effects of...
Michel Winock Nationalism, Antisemitism, and Fascism in France (Stanford University Press, 2000)
This wide-ranging work confronts the complex question of nationalism in France in its various permutations--myths, obsessions, possibilities, and dangers. French nationalism has always been a double-edged sword, from its beginnings in the French Revolution through the two Napoleonic empires, Boulangism...
Hannah Arendt On Violence (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1970)
An analysis of the nature, causes, and significance of violence in the second half of the twentieth century. Arendt also re-examines the relationship between war, politics, violence, and power.
Charles Forsdick, Etienne Achille, Lydie Moudileno Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in Modern France (Liverpool University Press, 2020)
Recognized as one of the most influential studies of memory in the late twentieth century, Pierre Nora's monumental project Les Lieux de mémoire has been celebrated for its elaboration of a ground-breaking paradigm for rethinking the relationship between the nation...
Mytheli Sreenivas Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India (University of Washington Press, 2021)
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, India played a pivotal role in global conversations about population and reproduction. In Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India, Mytheli Sreenivas demonstrates how colonial administrators, postcolonial development experts, nationalists, eugenicists, feminists...
Ben Herzog, Ediberto Román Revoking Citizenship : Expatriation in America from the Colonial Era to the War on Terror (New York University Press, 2015)
Expatriation, or the stripping away citizenship and all the rights that come with it, is usually associated with despotic and totalitarian regimes. The imagery of mass expulsion of once integral members of the community is associated with civil wars, ethnic...
James Staples Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian: The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India (University of Washington Press, 2020)
Bovine politics exposes fault lines within contemporary Indian society, where eating beef is simultaneously a violation of sacred taboos, an expression of marginalized identities, and a route to cosmopolitan sophistication. The recent rise of Hindu nationalism has further polarized traditional...
Please Note:
While the Virtual Library is now live for use, we are still working to update its contents and improve its functionality.
It is usable by all visitors, but the hyperlinks to materials listed are for UChicago community members with a CNet ID and password.
Please direct feedback and suggestions to Kathleen Cavanaugh.
For technical assistance, email pozenhumanrights @ uchicago.edu.