The Major:
This week’s featured program is the Anthropology Major with a Concentration in Disasters, Displacement and Human Rights at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. From the website:
…faculty and students study global and local issues across historical and geographical scales, bringing a critical focus to disasters, migration, displacement, the substantive struggles facing refugees and asylum seekers, and the relationship between these and social inequality. Our faculty and students, working across sub-disciplines, have engaged in post-conflict investigations using innovative forensic approaches, assisted refugees and their advocates in asylum cases, and aided communities with problems relating to the repatriation of human remains after violent conflicts. DDHR brings together scholarly inquiry into structural and political violence, economic development/underdevelopment, global inequality, resource access/extraction, environmental justice and food (in)security, identity and social inequality, and climate change. We foster critical and nuanced perspectives on the substantive concepts of human rights and the international legal norms and institutions that embody and enact them.
Two Interesting Courses
ANTH 420 – Disasters
Examines how anthropological approaches and research can play a vital role in disaster prevention, preparedness, and response using communities in crisis as our foci of discussion. Will examine the topic of disasters from both an analytical and case studies approach.
ANTH 421 – Refugees and Displaced People
Examines historical and contemporary issues facing refugees and displaced people worldwide from socio-cultural and human rights perspectives. Topics addressed include the theory, methods, and ethics of research with refugees and displaced people, international legal frameworks, the role of culture, political dynamics of refugee movements and internal displacement, and critical approaches to humanitarian responses.
Five Possible Complementary Minors at the University of Tennessee Knoxville
Unique Opportunities within the Major/Minor
The Department of Anthropology hosts the DDHR Webinar Series:
DDHR Webinars draw critical attention to contemporary social crises as they impinge upon the physical, social, and economic well-being of human populations across the world. Spanning a range of foci the series aims to invite conversation and dialogue, by inviting scholars to discuss specific themes that link the study of disasters, displacement and human rights to critical research into the inequalities, structural violence as well as tenacious forms of popular critique and resistance that shapes our contemporary social landscape.
Sample Similar Programs
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- SUNY New Paltz: Disaster Studies Minor
- University of Mississippi: Disaster Sciences Minor
- University of South Dakota: Disaster Response Minor