Building upon skills acquired in the first term, this course deepens the students’ understanding of the relationship between the arts and human rights from a multidisciplinary perspective. The course deals with the human rights of freedom of expression and the arts, the limits of freedom of the arts, the right of everone to take part in cultural life and other cultural rights.

Students will learn about these rights in the framework of international and regional protection of human rights and the arts, analyse specific cases of limits of freedom of the arts, more recent developments in the protection of cultural rights and key challenges to democracy,  human rights and artistic freedom in times of increasing authoritarianism and  polarisation as well as shrinking space of civil society.

For their assessment, students will be asked to select specific topics concerning the relationship between the arts and human rights, submit a short paper, present it and discuss it with other students after having read all the other papers.

Presentation of a paper topic, as well as submission and presentation of a paper (up to five pages) and active participation in the discussion of all papers.

Literature

Allison Bisset, Blackstone's International Human rights Documents, 13th ed, Oxford University Press 2023

Fiana Gantheret/Nowenn Guibert/Sofia Stolk (eds), Art and Human Rights - A Multidisciplinary Approach to Contemporary Issues, Edward Elgar Publishing 2023 (available in the Cloud folder).

Julian Fifer/Angela Impey/Peter G. Kirchschläger/Manfred Nowak/George Ulrich (eds), The Routledge Companion to Music and Human Rights, Routledge 2022 (available in the Cloud folder).

See also the various reports of the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights (Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights | OHCHR) and this 2017 FRA Report: Exploring the connections between arts and human rights.