Center for Global Humanities

Historian Jerold Auerbach argued in 1983 that "where community ends, law begins" and critiqued "misguided enthusiasm for alternative dispute resolution" while remaining skeptical about whether law produces justice. In this seminar, we affirm and challenge parts of Auerbach's analysis in the light of contemporary challenges of legal systems and courts, changing notions of community, and innovative forms and uses of conflict resolution. We look at ways that "dispute resolution" techniques have been used to build relationships on individual and communal levels in the aftermath of systemic violence. We review research about what people understand justice to be. In examining these and other examples and issues, we reflect on the complex relationships between solving problems, resolving disputes and finding justice.

With Ars Americana, Ars Politica as our guidebook, this seminar tries to peel American democracy out of the candy wrapper to see if it tastes as good as advertised. After puncturing a few myths surrounding the birth of democracy, we highlight some of the anomalies of the current electoral system, tour the alternatives to the "one man, one vote" clunker we have in place, and travel abroad for a short lesson in history and in people's power.

This seminar discusses how, facing the greatest problem humans have ever come across, we need to be able to work effectively both in our local communities to find new ways to power our lives, and in the largest national and global arenas to make sure that unchecked global warming doesn't defeat our best efforts. He will bring examples from his and his colleagues' work at 350.org in 189 countries, and from the mass civil disobedience he helped organize this summer in Washington, as well as from his own experiences on the ground in northern New England.

This seminar reflects on the irony that while the peoples of the Middle East are demanding the right to good education, health, and employment, Americans, battered by an economic systems that eludes most people's grasp, seem to be resigned to a future without such rights.

This seminar discusses that polarization and vitriolic debate are nothing new in American political discourse. In recent elections, however, they have become so extreme that it is no longer merely alarmist to worry about the viability of democracy. We argue against one another without arguing with one another. What makes this so dangerous now is that the technology that permits the wondrous instantaneous dissemination of information also permits the instantaneous dissemination of misinformation, and the absence of the checks and balances that genuine dialogue provides, the rhetoric continues to spiral out of control. A large part of the problem is that we don't know what an argument can be. We don't know how to argue. We speak of arguments using images of warfare and fighting. We want our arguments to be strong and on target and to carry a lot of punch. We want to have knockdown arguments, or even killer arguments. We need to have our defenses up and be ready with counterattacks, hoping to shoot down a weak argument, or at least looking for an opening to force a retreat. What makes this so toxic is that the way we speak about argument reflects the way we think about arguments and, worse, it affects how we argue. It turns interlocutors into enemies, and ruins the chances for constructive dialogue. It puts us in the awkward situation that the only way we can learn something is by losing – and no one wants to do that!

This seminar discusses that while the American West has its own distinctive history, that history connects to world-wide issues in many ways. Flummoxed by the seeming scarcity of water in the interior West, the first Anglo-American visitors created a characterization of the West as the Great American Desert. In later eras, especially in times of more abundant rainfall, that characterization came to seem short-sighted and inaccurate, an under-estimation of both the actual water supply and of the ingenuity of engineers. Circumstances in the early twenty-first century—the prospects for reallocating water from farms to cities, the rise of demands for water based on recreation and environmental preservation, and the uncertainties of climate change—ask for a reconsideration of the characterization of the American West as shaped by aridity and semi-aridity and of the place of the region in the broad planetary arrangements of fresh water and human population. The case study of the Denver Water Department will bring these vast questions, in the most literal sense, down to earth.

This seminar focuses on the impact of the "Arab Spring" political protests that started in Yemen, located at the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, in February. These led to unrest that brought the country to the brink of civil war and economic collapse. Yemen has been ruled by a military leader, Ali Abdullah Salih, who came to power in 1978. In 1990, North and South Yemen were united, followed by a brief civil war in 1993. Before the recent protests there was a secessionist movement in Yemen's south and an open tribal rebellion near the border with Saudi Arabia. In the past decade the United States has given millions of dollars in aid to President Salih to theoretically combat al-Qaida in Yemen. Questions addressed include the influence of conservative Saudi-backed salafism, the nature of Yemeni tribalism, the role of youth and students in protesting for their own future in a democratic Yemen, and the exaggerated fears about Yemen as a terrorist haven. President Salih once remarked that ruling Yemen was like dancing on the heads of snakes. Now that the snakes have bitten, what is next?

This seminar focuses on the history of Libya and its future beyond Qaddafi.

This seminar focuses on the subject of Pauline Maier's book, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788, which was published by Simon and Schuster in October 2010 and is the first narrative history of the process by which the Constitution's fate was decided, state by state, in specially elected conventions. Why, despite the existence of a full shelf of books on the federal Convention in Philadelphia, was this book not written long before? What's new? And--- last but not least--- why were the delegates from Maine (still, of course, a part of Massachusetts) so important at the Massachusetts ratifying convention?

A crisis of intellectual property looms in several key areas of today’s information economy. In pharmaceuticals and agriculture conflicts over patenting rage, while in the realm of digital media intellectual property rights and their policing provoke ferocious debates. This seminar puts this crisis into historical context, examining how intellectual property came into being in the first place, why it is now so controversial, and what may happen to it in the future.