Global College
Institute for Human Rights and Global Studies
Director: Vacant
About the Institute
About the Human Rights and Global Studies BA Program
About the Institute
The Institute for Human Rights and Global Studies provides a forum for critical exploration - through teaching, research and community involvement - of the evolving terrain of individual and group rights and how it is articulated in the processes often referred to as ‘globalization’.
Students, faculty, visiting scholars and community participants at the Institute examine multifaceted impacts of ‘globalization’, including economic integration, advancements in transportation and communications technology, the distribution of benefits, diversity and representation, and powerful cultural phenomena that transcend national borders.
It is increasingly the case that not all economic and social problems are produced by, or solvable within, the borders of a given society or through the core institutions of a nation-state. The Institute provides a basis for exploring global developments involving the recognition of Indigenous people’s rights as players on the international stage.
This Institute operates on the assumption that various disciplines offer different slants or viewpoints for looking at what, certainly, is a single, complex, multi-faceted phenomenon. This inter-disciplinary research and teaching institute is built on the recognition that we need to re-examine many of our basic assumptions about society, state, economy, human and non-human life, science and technology, environment, justice and equity, culture, language, individual and collective rights. Within this context, both human rights and globalization are critically engaged.
About the Director
Vice Principal of Global College
Telephone: 204.988.7106
Email: d.peachey@uwinnipeg.ca
Dean E. Peachey serves as Vice-Principal of Global College. He is Coordinator of Human Rights and Global Studies, and is a member of the joint committee administering the Joint MA in Peace and Conflict Studies between University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba.
His teaching and research focuses on transitional justice (ways of responding to human rights atrocities), and reconciliation in a variety of settings. His recent research examines community-based reconciliation efforts in northern Uganda that arise from two decades of civil war between the government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army. He has a deep interest in the intersection of religion and conflict, and is active in inter-faith dialogue activities.
Prior to joining Global College, he provided administrative leadership for Menno Simons College, a college of Canadian Mennonite University affiliated with University of Winnipeg, and taught conflict resolution studies.
Before moving to Winnipeg, he worked for twenty years in Kitchener, Ontario, where he was active in developing the theory and practice of conflict resolution in Canada. He founded Conflict Resolution Network Canada, taught Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College and the University of Waterloo, served as president of the Fund for Dispute Resolution, and was a member of the Ontario Civilian Commission on Police Services. He has worked as mediator and conflict resolution consultant in a variety of settings, including community issues, land use and planning disputes, alternatives to litigation, and religious contexts.
He received a PhD and MA in social psychology from the University of Waterloo, and a BA in psychology from Eastern Mennonite University.
About the Human Rights and Global Studies BA Program
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Human Rights and Global Studies BA Program Coordinator: Dr. Dean Peachey T: 204.988.7106 d.peachey@uwinnipeg.ca • Degree Requirements and Course Descriptions • Experimental Courses (2010) • Registration |
Program Overview
This Thematic Major in Human Rights and Global Studies provides a formal structure for University of Winnipeg students who are committed to obtaining an education organized around questions of social justice, global citizenship, and human rights. The thematic major in human rights explicitly adopts an interdisciplinary approach not only in its core courses, but also within and across each of the three streams described below, from which students will choose their courses. As such, students majoring in Human Rights and Global Studies will be exposed to diverse perspectives from fields such as conflict resolution, gender studies, international development studies, culture and communication, English, politics, history, geography, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and religious studies. This degree program gives to students an opportunity to explore issues of ‘human rights’ in a particular context – that defined by globalization. It is attention to this aspect which serves as the core rationale for inclusion of particular courses with a human rights dimension while excluding others. The intersection of human rights and the historical, present, and future trajectory of globalization define the core impulse informing this Major.
In addition to requiring students to take certain required courses, there are three streams from which students will choose additional courses. Thus, the streams combine multidisciplinary grounding and specialized themes as well as hands-on experience, including an optional practicum for the three year degree and a mandatory practicum for the four year degree
(see below for details):
STREAM 1: READING AND WRITING HUMAN RIGHTS
Our knowledge of the global world is conveyed to us largely through texts and images; our struggle to work for human rights and social justice is equally dependent on our ability to communicate with each other. Within the context of globalization, communication strategies often occur on a terrain defined by the dominance of western cultures, languages, frameworks, and technologies. Students choosing courses from this Stream will be encouraged to understand that communication is not neutral; it is implicated in structures of power that work at all levels of society. Students will develop skills necessary for a critical engagement with received wisdoms, with media, and with the ways in which the common sense of the world serves to advantage some and disadvantage others. Students will have the opportunity to engage a range of communication practices and strategies in this context, and to consider the ways in which they intersect with and shape specific human rights discourses. At the same time, students have an opportunity to consider bodies of literature – postcolonial, aboriginal, diasporic, gay/lesbian – which have contributed in various ways to the development and articulation of particular human rights issues. Students in this stream are strongly encouraged to achieve proficiency in one additional European or First Nations language
STREAM 2: SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND ECONOMY
This stream highlights the exploration of globalization, understood broadly as referring to a range of social, cultural, and economic processes, and focuses on the struggle to achieve social justice and human rights in a world in which the global spread of western norms, values, priorities, and practices is increasingly met with resistance, both violent and non-violent, at the local level. Courses in this stream provide students with a range of critical perspectives on globalization, and insights into historical and present-day global practices which have brought people into contact with one another. Students are provided with opportunities to study social, cultural, and economic practices that derive from non-western perspectives, and to consider the challenges which confront us when the ethical or normative values informing human rights perspectives exist in tension or conflict.
STREAM 3: INSTITUTIONS, LAW, AND POLITICS
Courses in this stream provide students with the opportunity to explore the political, legal, and institutional framework (at local, national, and international levels) according to which human rights and social justice are defined, and within which the struggle to achieve human rights and social justice occurs. Students will consider how these structures operate in historical and present-day contexts at the international and domestic levels, how they have evolved in the context of globalization, and how they intersect with relations of power. Students are further exposed to ethical and legal perspectives on the relationship between the state and its citizens, and on our obligations to one another.
The thematic major draws primarily on existing courses offered at the UW and, over time, student feedback will be incorporated into how Global College expands course options. This Thematic Major is in keeping with the UW’s commitment to provide educational opportunities which reflect the challenges facing society at the local and global levels, which enhance our students’ ability to act as effective global citizens, and which reflect the significance of humane values and social justice as organizing themes in higher education.
Learning Outcomes, Career Options and Future Possibilities.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successfully completing this program the student will be able to:
- Think critically and communicate effectively through writing and speaking
- Demonstrate a fundamental understanding of key concepts of economic, political, social, religious and geographic structures
- Demonstrate a fundamental conceptual comprehension of contemporary global issues and problems related to gender, class, ethnicity, race and multiculturalism.
- Demonstrate a basic ability to critically analyze and systematize issues of global concern and human rights using an interdisciplinary approach.
- Demonstrate a fundamental ability to exercise problem-solving skills in assessment and implementation using an interdisciplinary approach
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of social sciences, including the impact that social institutions and values have on individuals and cultures and verse versa.
- Demonstrate a fundamental ability to construct a research question and identify relevant information sources.
- Demonstrate a basic theoretical comprehension of the concepts and literature on global studies and human rights
- Discuss human rights within the context of globalization
- Present research findings effectively using text and visuals
- Demonstrate the use of key concepts in contemporary human rights and global studies discourse.
- Explain the historical, cultural, philosophical sources of human rights and the notion of globalization
- Describe the structure and functions of the United Nations, Security Council, World Bank and International Monetary Fund
- Provide a basic description of the process by which treaties are made
- Articulate the contents of Human Rights, Economic and Cultural documents and their institutional frameworks (e.g. the Human Rights Charter)
Career Options
The program is designed to prepare students for positions in:
- International rights and advocacy organizations
- International non-profit organizations
- International Aid Organizations
- Humanitarian and Refugee Organizations
- Academia
Faculty Members
Administration
The Principal of the Global College and the Director of the Institute for Human Rights and Global Studies will act as advisors to students taking the Major, and, are responsible for the timely offering of capstone and multidisciplinary courses (MULT).
Acting Principal, and
Coordinator of Human Rights and Global Studies
Prof. Dean Peachey
Global College
T: 204.988.7106
d.peachey@uwinnipeg.ca
More information