The co-editors of Namaste, UConn’s student-produced human rights journal, are respectively and passionately pursuing the study of history, human rights, and sociology combined with human rights.

That the three editors’ majors reflect interdisciplinary interests is illustrative of the nature of human rights studies. UConn recently became the first public research university to offer a human rights major, a BA program that is based within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and strongly supported by the schools of Fine Arts, Engineering, Agriculture, and Business.

“UConn has the preeminent interdisciplinary human rights program outside of a law school,” says Gladstein Professor of Human Rights, Law, and Anthropology Richard Wilson, who directs UConn’s Human Rights Institute.

Sponsored by student government funds and UConn’s Human Rights Institute, Namaste has been published annually since 2006. It takes its name from a common Hindi greeting that can be interpreted as a universal gesture of empathy and good will. Namaste’s wide-ranging purposes include serving as a medium for students to express their human rights concerns, stating and clarifying what human rights are and how they should be approached. Submissions can be fiction and creative pieces, poems, non-fiction papers and essays, photographs, and artwork, making the journal both expressive and informative.

Topics in previous issues range from the experiences of an 8-year-old child soldier in Uganda, to advocacy for same-sex marriage, to the problems facing the Australian Aboriginal community. One student submitted a poem he wrote while participating in UConn’s Cape Town, South Africa study abroad program, working in a burn unit of the Red Cross Memorial Children’s Hospital. Titled “Ward C-2, Room 5, Bed A,” the poem reflected on the circumstances of a little girl who lives in a township that’s plagued by electrical fires because the buildings are so decrepit.

This year’s editors, including Edward “Teddy” Burger ’12 (CLAS), who is graduating with an individualized major in human rights, decided the 2012 issue would focus upon the U.S.

Topics of submitted stories include rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, human rights violations resulting from America’s “War on Drugs,” and the challenges that recent U.S. immigrants face.

Student contributors benefit because including abstracts and references is a requirement for the publication of non-fiction submissions, creating an avenue for UConn undergrads to showcase their human rights-oriented academic research. Student editors benefit from working for Namaste because it serves as a learning tool for those who are interested in working on professional publications in the future, as well as providing them with graduate school credentials.

“I love that Namaste gets students to look deeper into what they have learned through course work, internships, etc.,” says co-editor Kelsey Barringham ’13 (CLAS), a double major in sociology and human rights. “Students really reflect upon how they feel about human rights and its relevancy in our day and age.”

Considered an internship opportunity, working as an editor for Namaste requires a minimum of three hours each week – inevitably expanding to many more hours as the publication date nears – and the students receive three credits. It is a capstone course for both the major and the minor in human rights. The editors meet twice weekly with editorial assistants – students who have volunteered to help with the journal – to discuss progress, review submissions, and delegate tasks.

“Editing Namaste lets me see some fantastic original scholarship from a variety of disciplines on campus,” says co-editor David Schwegman ’13 (CLAS), a history major with a minor in human rights.

Political science professor Richard P. Hiskes, director of undergraduate programs for UConn’s Human Rights Institute, says the editors are “excellent students, very engaged with human rights in and outside of the classroom. They’re creative, with the ability to generate other students’ interest in human rights – traits that make them good leaders, and people we can depend upon to produce an excellent issue.”

The free journal will be available in April at the Human Rights Institute at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Says Barringham, “We hope this issue of Namaste will be a journal the community is proud of, like it has been in the past. It reflects what talented undergraduates we have at UConn.”