CW911 Writing Human Rights and Injustice
CW911 Writing Human Rights and Injustice
Convenor: Professor Andrew Williams
Term 1. NB: Classes begin in week 1 and continue throughout the term including Reading Week
Overview
People from many and diverse walks of life feel compelled to write in response to past and present injustices: journalists, creative writers, lawyers, historians, philosophers and sociologists. They may write to seek redress or policy change, or they may simply want to bring wrongs to public attention. But to do so, they face common problems of representation. What forms of writing are appropriate? Which are possible? What ethical and political sensitivities and sensibilities are constraining? Are any liberating? What skills do they need to develop to write effectively and well? How is the matter of ‘truth’ addressed in different media and how does this affect the nature and content of representing wrongs?
On this module we will examine the ethical and practical elements of writing about human rights and wrongs or social injustice in varying contexts and media, looking at classic and contemporary non-fiction and fiction.
We will also offer you a chance to investigate and write about topics of your own choosing. We shall begin to think about these projects when we meet for our first session.
During the module we shall examine writing on selected contemporary crises to illustrate questions of technique, competing political and media agendas, ethical dilemmas and legal constraints that those writing about injustice commonly face.
In addition to weekly group sessions you will also have one-to-one meetings with the tutor to discuss and develop your writing for the module. To encourage the development of your writing, you will be asked to complete very short writing assignments that will be set during the term. These will provide you with an opportunity to experiment and obtain some feedback on those efforts.
Indicative programme for Term 1 (subject to confirmation):
Each week we will consider different themes (such as conflict; migration; genocide; erased histories, freedoms, the impact of technologies) and the ways in which writing has responded to them. We will look at journalism, non-fiction, blogs, fiction, poetry etc. Readings will be provided to address both themes and forms and will be released on Moodle week by week – readings for the first four sessions will be available at the beginning of the module.
We will also look at different writing conundrums in the context of these themes:
- How can we understand an injustice?
- What evidence can we accept?
- What’s the distinction between truth, lies and perspective?
- How can we write about it?
- What barriers to writing about injustice will we face and how can these be overcome?
Throughout, we will provide as much space and time as we can for you to explore your own possibilities for writing.
The outline of sessions is as follows:
Week 1: Open House with Tutor
This will be an introductory session without any required reading or preparation. We’ll simply find out about each other and our expectations for the module.
Week 2: Full module meeting with the tutors
We will introduce the detail of the module and also begin to explore the difficulties and issues involved in writing about wrongs. In particular, we will debate the relationship between academic and other forms of writing. We shall also create a schedule for your one-to-one writing tutorials over the term.
Readings:
George Orwell ‘Why I write’
Deborah Levy ‘Things I don’t want to know: Political Purpose’
Week 3: UNDERSTANDING INJUSTICE: Mapping individual and systemic wrongs
In the first part of the session, we will look at the concept of injustice and how it might reveal deeper and more varied aspects than perhaps seem obvious when starting out to write. The impact of discovery through research but also the process of writing is something that we will consider. We’ll look at A Very British Killing as an example of an encounter with ambivalence even with what is an obvious injustice and consider how the story has extended beyond the individual wrong to the systemic.
Reading: A.T. Williams: extracts of A Very British Killing
Week 4: REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS
We will consider the impact of images of suffering on the moral, ethical and authorial decisions we make when writing about or responding to wrongs.
Reading: Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
We will also look in particular at the work of authors and artists in creating images of wrongs and ask how these intersect with writing.
Week 5: OPENING WOUNDS
How societies deal with past atrocities or conflicts remains contested, as we will have seen in Week 3. And how writing can address the questions and issues arising will be our topic this week. We’ll examine this through the lens of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which has attracted considerable attention recently. Two works in particular, both Orwell Prize winners (one for Political Fiction, the other for Non-fiction) show what might be possible.
Week 6: Reading week
There will be no class this week
Week 7: TRUTH, EVIDENCE AND PERSPECTIVE
Should truth get in the way of a good story? How rigorous must the evidence for your writing be? Are there ethical standards applicable when sifting through the material you want to use in your writing about injustices? What are they and which ones might you decide to break? And how do legal ideas of evidence relate to journalism or other forms of writing?
Readings:
David Vann: extract from Last Day on Earth
Week 8: AI AND THE DIGITAL AGE
AI has changed many ways in which writing is produced. But what is its place in the creative field? We will examine this question and test how AI impacts on your writing and how you perceived the writings of others.
Week 9: WHOSE HISTORY?
Schoolchildren in the UK learn a great deal about the Stuarts, the Tudors, and the two world wars, but next to nothing about the history of the British Empire and its legacy, and less than nothing about the industrialisation of slavery, without which the industrial revolution would never have happened. Similar restrictions on learning about past wrongs apply in different jurisdictions. Who decides whose histories we learn, and whose we overlook? How can we, as writers, challenge and replace official histories that erase more than they reveal?
Week 10: WRITING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE
We will look at the difficulties and possibilities of writing about climate change and the environment.
Assessment
For the MA in Writing:
For MA in Writing students enrolling in 2023: A 5000-word piece of creative writing, with a 1000-word commentary on the aims and processes involved. (30 CATS)
For PT students in their second year: Either an essay of 10,000 words on a topic arising from the module, agreed with the tutor; or a piece of creative writing, 8,500 words in length, on a topic agreed with the tutor, with a 1,500-word commentary on the aims and processes involved (45 CATS).
For the MA in English: a 6,000 word essay (30 CATS).
For the MA in Philosophy and Literature: a 5,000 word essay (20 CATS)
For the LLM in International Development Law and Human Rights and LLM in Advanced Legal Studies: a 2500 word critical essay on a topic of the student’s choice relating to the module; and a 2500 creative work on the same topic. (20 CATS)