History Commons^™

We Just Need To Pee: Bathroom Bills And The Intersection Of Human Rights, Gender, And Race, Lena Tenney

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Although rarely publicly discussed, bathrooms are a fundamental element of everyday life. In fact, the majority of the population does not question their right or ability to access public restroom facilities because they are a mundane aspect of daily routine. However, the recent rise of “bathroom bills” in state legislatures has sparked significant media coverage and highlighted activist movements seeking to guarantee safe, affirming, and legally protected access to bathrooms for people of all gender identities and expressions.

This paper will illustrate that bathroom access is not only a matter of public policy, but also a question of human rights. …

Naming Rape: The Social Practice Of Power, Agency, And Victimization In The Italo-Ethiopian War, 1936-1940, Caroline Waldron Merithew

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper, “Naming Rape,” shows how and when rape got named as part of the movement against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. I show that activists used the term strategically at certain points and specific places of the struggle to sway opinion and move the international community to challenge fascist violence and expansionism. Naming rape was something new for antiwar activists at this time.

Paper Rights: The Emergence Of Documentary Identities In Post-Colonial India, 1950–67, Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

This essay contextualises the emergence of a document regime which regulated routine travel through the deployment of the India–Pakistan Passport and Visa Scheme in 1952. It suggests that such travel documents were useful for the new Indian state to delineate citizenship and the nationality of migrants and individual travellers from Pakistan. The bureaucratic and legal mediations under the Scheme helped the Indian state to frame itself before its new citizens as the sole certifier of some of their rights as Indians. In contrast, applicants for these documents viewed them as utilitarian, meant to facilitate their travel across the new borders. …

Black White And In-Between: Race And Ethnicity In The Criminal Justice System 1885-1915, Elizabeth M. Wilhelm

Honors Theses

Events in the past year have brought racial and ethnic discrimination in the criminal justice system to the forefront of American consciousness. In reality, race has been used to create stereotypes for centuries, often supported by “scientific” and “statistical” evidence to support the idea that certain races are more likely to commit crimes than others. In my research, I trace the development of these ideas as well as the evidence used to support these racial notions primarily by drawing upon conference transcripts from two professional organizations: The National Prison Association and the National Conference of Charities and Corrections covering the …

Partitioned Lives: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens In India And Pakistan, 1947-65, Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

Partitioned States offers new perspective in the histories of Partition and its aftermath by connecting it to the long, drawn out and skewed formation of new national entities: India and East Pakistan. The book focuses on the Bengal Partition and locates its narrative within the intersection of long term cross border movement, chronic small-scale violence, the emergence of a document regime, and biased national refugee policies, all of which contributed to the formation of national citizenships in India and East Pakistan.

This book argues that minorities -- Hindus in East Pakistan, Muslims in eastern India -- and the discourse over …

Japan And Ethiopia: An Appraisal Of Similarities And Divergent Courses, Messay Kebede

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The idea of a comparison between pre-1935 Ethiopia with Japan before and during the Meiji Restoration arouses contradictory reactions among students of Ethiopia. Some find the idea indefensible, others judge it quite reasonable and instructive. Those who reject the parallel do so by emphasizing the social gap which separated Japan and Ethiopia, while those who welcome the idea base their arguments on historical similarities and on the identity of objectives of their respective modernizing circles. Thus, among the first group, Shiferaw Bekele contests the seriousness of a parallel between Japan and Ethiopia, arguing that the Ethiopian leaders had only a …