Universität Wien

240116 SE VM5 / VM1 - The International History and Politics of Humanitarianism (2023W)

Continuous assessment of course work

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 25 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Tuesday 10.10. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 17.10. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 24.10. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 31.10. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 07.11. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 14.11. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 21.11. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 28.11. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 05.12. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 12.12. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 09.01. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 16.01. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 23.01. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Tuesday 30.01. 09:15 - 10:45 Seminarraum SG1 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Humanitarianism is one of the defining features of our contemporary world and humanitarian aid has become a global norm. The meaning of the term “humanitarian” can broadly be defined as “concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare,” and it represents a set of individual and official policy responses to human suffering. However, concerns for distant suffering are nothing new. Humanitarianism developed through the “organized compassion” of religious missions of the nineteenth century, followed by increased aid diffusion in the state of emergency during and after the two world wars, during the Cold War, and in the period of decolonization. Furthermore, states have increasingly employed the concept of “humanitarian intervention” in relation to military action in volatile regions. By drawing attention on the longue durée in the chronology of international humanitarianism, the course will present key actors, rooted practices, and discourses (narrative and visual) that have shaped the contemporary humanitarian world. It aims to present humanitarianism as a historical phenomenon and present its fundamental ambiguities and paradoxes across key chronological moments. The themes that the course includes are early histories of humanitarianism, professionalization of humanitarianism, the crystallization of international humanitarian organizations, the making of the NGO movement, humanitarian spectacles, or the humanitarian-development nexus.

By the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. Contextualize, deconstruct, and critically engage and reflect on the
meaning of humanitarianism in historical perspective.

2. Engage in contemporary debates on key humanitarian actors, their
language (visual and narrative), their agendas, and their practices on the
ground, drawing insights from historical background and experiences.

3. Develop the capacity to critically engage with the literature and interpret
past and contemporary sources (visual, textual, oral, data) relating to the
topic of the course.

Assessment and permitted materials

Term Paper (50%)
Presentation (30%)
Participation (20%)

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Examination topics

Reading list

Didier Fassin, “Introduction: Humanitarian Government,” in Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 1-19.
Davide Rodogno, “Certainty, Compassion, and the Ingrained Arrogance of Humanitarians,” in Neville Wylie, James Crossland, and Melanie Oppenheimer eds., The Red Cross Movement: Reevaluating and reimagining the history of humanitarianism (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2020), 27-44.
Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D. Brown, “Introduction” in Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D. Brown eds., Humanitarianism and Suffering. The Mobilization of Empathy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1-30.
Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011).
Marian Moser Jones, “Race, Class and Gender Disparities in Clara Barton’s Late Nineteenth-Century Disaster Relief,” Environment and History, Vol. 17, No.1 (February 2011), 107-131.
Sho Konishi, “The Emergence of an International Humanitarian Organization in Japan: The Origins of the Japanese Red Cross,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 119, No.4 (October 2013), 1129-1153.
Keith David Watenpaugh, “The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920-1927,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 115, No.5 (December 2010), 1315-1339.
Elisabeth Piller, “American War Relief, Cultural Mobilization, and the Myth of Impartial Humanitarianism,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 17, Issue 4 (October 2018), 619-635.
Tara Zahra,“ ‘The Psychological Marshall Plan:’ Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World War II,” Central European History, Vol. 44, No.1 (March 2011), 37-62.
Hilly B. Moodrick Even Khen and Alona Hagay-Frey, “Silence at the Nuremberg Trials: The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and Sexual Crimes against Women in the Holocaust,” Women’s Rights Law Reporter, Vol. 35 (Fall 2013)
Cristian Capotescu, Migrants into Humanitarians: Ethnic Solidarity and Private Aid-Giving during Romania’s Historic Flood of 1970,” East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures, Vol. 35, Issue 2 (2020), 293-312.
Scott Flipse, “The Latest Casualty of War: Catholic Relief Services, Humanitarianism, and the War in Vietnam, 1967-1968,” Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 27, Issue 2 (April 2002), 245-270.
Agnieszka Sobocinska, “‘Springs of Love:’ Sentiment and affect in mid-twentieth century development volunteering,” in Joy Damousi, Trevor Burnard, and Alan Lester eds., Humanitarianism, empire and transnationalism, 1760-1995 (Manchester, UK, Manchester University Press, 2022), 264-282.
Kevin O’Sullivan, “Humanitarian Encounters: Biafra, NGOs and imaginings of the Third World in Britain and Ireland, 1967-70,” Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 16, Issue 2-3 (2014), 299-315.
Stephen Wertheim, “A solution from hell: The United States and the rise of humanitarian interventionism, 1991-2003,” Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 12, Issue 3-4 (2010), 149-172.
Beat Schweizer, “Moral dilemmas for humanitarianism in the era of “humanitarian” military interventions,” IRRC, Vol. 86, No. 855 (2004), 547-564.
Dexter Filkins, “The Moral Logic of Humanitarian Intervention,” The New Yorker, 9 September 2019. Access at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/the-moral-logic-of-humanitarian-intervention
Heidi Postlewait, Kenneth Cain and Andrew Thomson, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A true story from Hell on Earth (New York: Hyperion, 2004)

Association in the course directory

VM5 / VM1

Last modified: We 04.10.2023 18:28