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Leviathan

Overview of the Context, Content, Conceptual Framework and Outcomes of Designing and Teaching a Human Rights Course in Iqaluit, Nunavut : Comprehensive Exam II

This paper is an overview of the context, content, conceptual framework and outcomes of a course entitled Introduction to Human Rights offered at Nunatta Campus, Iqaluit, NU (2002-3). The course was offered as one of a series in a joint northern-based Nunavut Arctic College and Carleton University Bachelor of Arts pilot project.

This is one component of a web page which also includes the original course outline I used to teach SOAN1001N and an additional weekly readings list adapted for purposes of this comprehensive exam.

Part I of this paper briefly discusses course content, the human actors, and the context in which the course unfolded. Part II describes the radical pedagogy that developed and was confirmed in the teaching of this course. It is technology-intense, inquiry- and student-centred, based on principles of relevance, responsibility, respect, reciprocity and reflexivity. Part III provides brief annotations and descriptions of specific core works used in this course and a wide sampling of current literature from the broader fields of political science, economics, political and ethical philosophy which impact directly or indirectly on human rights. Readings in Part III provided a background for lecture-discusssions which were designed to encourage maximum student intervention.

The course outline and weekly readings are on a web page authored for this comprehensive. The course outline was in the form of a resource-rich web page with links to full-text articles including human rights instruments and classical histories of the origins of human rights. Because the original course was offered in a non-conventional format with six hour sessions a revised thematic readings list was adapted for purposes of this comprehensive. Part III does not therefore entirely reflect lecture content offered in Nunavut 2002-3 although major themes and focus remained the same.

The online Appendix includes elements of the original course outline and useful resources developed for this course and adapted and improved for this comprehensive. These include timelines, hot-linked timelines, organic lexicons of key concepts, tables, images and hot-linked bibliographies. These are digital, organic or works-in-progress not fixed, frozen and complete. Sharable bibliographies were generated throughout the course using an EndNote library compiled for this course and comprehensive. Several layered images were produced as concept maps and visualizations using Adobe PhotoShop.

The Appendix includes elements of the original course outline and useful resources such as A multi-civilizational timeline a hot-linked timeline, organic lexicons of key concepts, tables, images and hot-linked bibliographies. These are digital, organic or works-in-progress not fixed, frozen and complete. The bibliographies were generated using EndNote database. The images were produced using Adobe PhotoShop. Examples include: Hunting Leviathan: Job, Jessie Oonark, and Thomas Hobbes

Course content and delivery

This first year introductory course in human rights provided an introduction to the development of a culture of human rights and tolerance that is meaningful in everyday life. Themes developed included the nurturing of a culture of human rights, geopolitics of exclusion and clash of civilizations thesis, apologies, genocide, aboriginal rights, women and rights, ethical concerns raised by increased market influence, state and corporate power, economic exploitation, the environment and rights (animal rights versus human rights: seal hunt as case study ), truth commissions.

Lectures, web-based presentations, guest speakers and workshops acted as catalysts to encourage engaged discussions on rights and responsibilities. Students learned to critically engage with human rights resources including texts, videos, works of art (literary and visual), and web resources. Nunavut Arctic College, where the course was initially offered, is well equipped with computer laboratories with high-speed Internet access available to NAC-Carleton students. Numerous readings including full-text articles were available on-line. These could be accessed through the course web page. Students contributed to an ongoing project of developing and sharing web-based resources such as bibliographies, timelines and glossaries of relevant terms in Inuktitut for northern-centred social science courses.

Course objectives

This course was designed to encourage students to critically engage with contemporary debates and to enhance understanding of the evolution of human rights in turbulent times. In this shared learning environment, participants became more confident in the use of key concepts in contemporary human rights discourse, acquired a clearer understanding of the historical, cultural, ideological tensions underlying human rights debates, learned to cross-reference events as depicted in the media, pop culture and everyday life conversations with wider human rights debates, learned how to access on-line Human Rights instruments, contributed to shareable web resources on human rights issues, instigated and engaged in conversations about human rights issues outside the classroom, presented a final project to a group outside the classroom to contribute to human rights education in the community through the sharing of study research and review projects --- at a minimum by uploading projects onto a web page and nurtured an inclusive yet discriminating language of human rights.

Carleton University's Centre for Initiatives in Education, in partnership with Nunavut Arctic College, has been offering part-time Bachelor of Arts courses and course facilitation workshops in Iqaluit since 2001.