Human Rights Bookshelf

The Human Rights Program highlights publications from faculty across several colleges and degree programs. Adding their voices to the ongoing debates and theories of human rights, our faculty are among the world’s leaders in writing on issues including transitional justice, representations and memory of mass violence, history of human rights, gender and war, and the defense of rights and rule of law.

We encourage all Human Rights Program affiliated Faculty to submit any recent book publications through this form so that we may keep our website up-to-date and showcase your accomplishments.

All Publications 

By publication year (most recent first)

 

Cover of the book features a complex painting on a black, orange, and yellow paneled background. The title of the book is displayed at the top of the cover and a note about the book as a homage to Patricia Ariza. The editors name is displayed at the bottom of the cover below the painting and homage note.
Justicia Social: Reivindicaciones del Arte de Creación Colectiva

Author: Luis Ramos-Garcia, eds.
2024
Peruvian, Colombian, Argentine, Ecuadorian, and American researchers explore the construction of Latin American theater in the U.S. through theatrical investigations, cultural studies, and other artistic expressions. The book is a homage to Patricia Ariza. 

Cover featuring a young Sri Lankan girl riding a bicycle in front of a destroyed building. The title "Brotherless Night" is displayed accors the top and the author's name, V.V. Ganeshananthan, is displayed accros the bottom.
Brotherless Night: A Novel

Author: V. V. Ganeshananthan
2023
Novel about the life of a young girl from Sri Lanka who struggles to find her place amongst the mounting violence and political turmoil of the country’s civil war. 

Cover of the novel "The Leopard's Furies." Features the back half of a leopard as if it is running off the cover and away from two spears coming from the left-hand side. The book's title is displayed across the top and the author's name is displayed across the bottom.
The Leopard’s Furies

Author: Steve Miles
2023
Based on a true story, this book explores the work of a UN Human Rights Council attorney and a law school student as they work to prosecute a doctor who tortured people for the Sierra Leone government.

Book cover with a print of people in black and white marching and holding a red banner with white lettering. The title and author's name are featured above the image on a dark gray background.
Seeking Justice: Access to Remedy for Corporate Human Rights Abuses

Author: Tricia Olsen
2023
Corporate wrongdoing is ubiquitous today. Yet, we know little about when victims have access to remedy. Seeking Justice explores variation in victims’ access to remedy mechanisms for corporate human rights abuse in Latin America using the newly created Corporations and Human Rights Database.

Book cover with a teal background and a painting of colorful people in the middle. The title of the book is displayed at the top of the cover and the author's name is displayed at the bottom of the cover.
Human Rights and Justice for All: Demanding Dignity in the United States and Around the World

Author: Carrie Booth Walling
2022
Exploration and teaching of human rights frameworks for navigating justice issues at all levels. Case studies consider how human rights violations have been addressed and how people can equip their knowledge for change-making.

 
Cover of this book with gray image of children's silhouettes. The list of authors appears in blue text in the top left corner of the cover, and the title and subtitle of the book are written in red and blue text, respectively, on the lower half of the cover.
Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents: Innovative Approaches to Research across Space and Time

Authors: Deborah Levison, Mary Jo Maynes, and Frances Vavrus, eds.
2021
This textbook showcases innovative approaches to the interdisciplinary field of childhood/youth studies, examining how young people in varying contemporary and historical contexts around the globe live their young lives as subjects, objects, and agents, and recognizing their rights to be heard on matters that concern them, per the United Nations Convention on the rights of the Child.

 
Cover of the book with a black and white image of a monument with two men in the background leaning up against a wall. The title and subtitle of the book appear on a transparent black box in the center of the cover. The authors name is features below the main image at the bottom of the cover.
Knowing about Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles

Author: Joachim J. Savelsberg
2021
The book examines strategies of silencing, denial, and acknowledgment in everyday interaction, public rituals, law, and politics. It illuminates social processes that drive dueling versions of history and counterproductive consequences of denial in an age of human rights hegemony.

Intermittences by Ana Forcinito
Intermittences: Memory, Justice and the Poetics of the Visible
Author: Ana Forcinito 
2019
A transdisciplinary study of the cultural and artistic process of transitional justice in Uruguay after the military dictatorship. Through a corpus of texts, photographs, and films, this book analyzes the poetics of memory construction, with a particular emphasis on those that propose aesthetic and interpretive variations to address the recent past and open space for new subjects of memory and struggles against impunity.
Cover of the book with the author's name at the top on a black background. The title of the book is written in large font in the center of the cover. The 'w' in "Wars" features a sword and the 'w' in "Law" features a automatic rifle. The subtitle of the book is written in smaller letters at the bottom of the cover.
Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict

Author: Tanisha Fazal
2018
Assesses the unintended consequences of the proliferation of the laws of war for the commencement, conduct, and conclusion of wars over the course of the past 150 years. Based on original data, one of the major findings of the book is that the effects of the proliferation of international humanitarian law differ greatly in interstate versus civil wars.

Legacies of Violence in Contemporary Spain: Exhuming the Past, Understanding the Present
Legacies of Violence in Contemporary Spain: Exhuming the Past, Understanding the Present
2016
Study of Francoist violence in contemporary Spain, focusing on exhumations of mass graves from the Civil War and post-war era.  
Book title: Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era
Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era: The Ethics of Never AgainMemory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era: The Ethics of Never Again
Authors: Alejandro Baer and Natan Sznaider
2016
Examination of the effects of a globalized Holocaust culture and how memory activists maneuver between duties of remembrance and the benefits of forgetting.  
Revealing New Truths about Spain’s Violent Past: Perpetrators Confessions and Victim Exhumations
Revealing New Truths about Spain’s Violent Past
Authors: Leigh Payne and Paloma Aguilar
2016
Analysis of Spain's transformation from consensual guilt and oblivion in dealing with its past to that of openness via victim testimony and perpetrators’ confessions.  
Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur
Representing Mass Violence
2015

Analysis reflecting the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence as represented to the public via media.  

The Contentious History of the International Bill of Human Rights
The Contentious History of the International Bill of Human Rights
Exploration of human rights, including the deep disagreement over their true source of origin, how to study them and how best to address their deficits.
The Development of International Human Rights Law: Volume I
The Development of International Human Rights Law
Essays by experts on human rights, encompassing the development of human rights law and many of its current controversies.  
Los umbrales del testimonio: Entre las narraciones de los sobrevivientes y las señas de la posdictadura
Los umbrales del testimonio: Entre las narraciones de los sobrevivientes y las señas de la posdictadura
Author: Ana Forcinito
2012
Rereading testimonial narratives of former political prisoners in Argentina and the central roles they played in the struggles against impunity.  
Book cover with a black background featuring a panel of orange and red images across the center. The title of the book is displayed across the top and the author's name is displayed across the bottom.
The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian

Author: Helen M. Kinsella
Explores the history and evolution of the laws of war and the principle of distinction. Describes the ongoing difficulties and failures of distinguishing between combatant and civilians and its consequences in armed conflict.

The Justice Cascade
The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics
Author: Kathryn Sikkink
2011
Reveals the emergence of human rights prosecutions and their effect on democracy, conflict, and repression.  
On the Frontlines: Gender, War, and the Post-Conflict Process
On the Frontlines: Gender, War, and the Post-Conflict Process
Authors: Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Naomi Cahn
2011

Consequences of violence and discrimination experienced by women in post-conflict states, offering practical solutions to ensure gender centrality in peacemaking and peace enforcement.  

Crime and Human Rights: Criminology of Genocide and Atrocities
Crime and Human Rights: Criminology of Genocide and Atrocities
Author: Joachim Savelsberg
2010
A linking of human rights scholarship with criminological theory to explore explanations of and responses to crimes against humanity.  
Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile
Judges Beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile
Author: Lisa Hilbink
2010
Longitudinal case study of Chilean judicial behavior before, during, and after the rule of Augusto Pinochet.  
Second-Wave Neoliberalism: Gender, Race, and Health Sector Reform in Peru
Second-Wave Neoliberalism: Gender, Race, and Health Sector Reform in Peru
2010
A case study of the multifaceted efforts to reform the health sector in Peru under the Fujimori regime.
Oath Betrayed: America’s Torture Doctors, 2nd ed.
Oath Betrayed: America’s Torture Doctors, 2nd ed.
Author: Steven Miles
2009
Telling of how doctors, psychologists, and medics cleared the way for the United States to torture prisoners in the war on terror.  
Love Marriage
Love Marriage
A story of the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who left their collapsing country and married in America, chronicles how Sri Lankan politics continues to affect daily life.  
Sons of the Sierra: Juarez, Diaz, and the People of Ixtlan, Oaxaca, 1855–1920
Sons of the Sierra: Juarez, Diaz, and the People of Ixtlan, Oaxaca, 1855–1920

Author: Patrick McNamara
2007
Historical exploration of events in Ixtlan, where Zapotec Indians supported the liberal cause and sought to exercise influence over statewide and national politics.