{"id":55833,"date":"2012-03-01T10:05:49","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T15:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=55833"},"modified":"2012-03-05T10:42:49","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T15:42:49","slug":"journal-a-medium-for-students-to-express-human-rights-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/03\/journal-a-medium-for-students-to-express-human-rights-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Journal a Medium for Students to Express Human Rights Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Co-editors<\/a>
Co-editors Kelsey Barringham and David Schwegman with past issues of Namaste, UConn's student-produced human rights journal. (Max Sinton\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The co-editors of Namaste<\/em>, UConn\u2019s student-produced human rights journal, are respectively and passionately pursuing the study of history, human rights, and sociology combined with human rights.<\/p>\n

That the three editors\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cUConn has the preeminent interdisciplinary human rights program outside of a law school,\u201d says Gladstein Professor of Human Rights, Law, and Anthropology Richard Wilson, who directs UConn\u2019s Human Rights Institute.<\/p>\n

Sponsored by student government funds and UConn\u2019s Human Rights Institute, Namaste<\/em> 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<\/em>\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Cape Town, South Africa study abroad program, working in a burn unit of the Red Cross Memorial Children\u2019s Hospital. Titled \u201cWard C-2, Room 5, Bed A,\u201d the poem reflected on the circumstances of a little girl who lives in a township that\u2019s plagued by electrical fires because the buildings are so decrepit.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s editors, including Edward \u201cTeddy\u201d Burger \u201912 (CLAS), who is graduating with an individualized major in human rights, decided the 2012 issue would focus upon the U.S.<\/p>\n

Topics of submitted stories include rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, human rights violations resulting from America\u2019s \u201cWar on Drugs,\u201d and the challenges that recent U.S. immigrants face.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love that Namaste<\/em> gets students to look deeper into what they have learned through course work, internships, etc.,\u201d says co-editor Kelsey Barringham \u201913 (CLAS), a double major in sociology and human rights. \u201cStudents really reflect upon how they feel about human rights and its relevancy in our day and age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considered an internship opportunity, working as an editor for Namaste<\/em> requires a minimum of three hours each week \u2013 inevitably expanding to many more hours as the publication date nears \u2013 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 \u2013 students who have volunteered to help with the journal \u2013 to discuss progress, review submissions, and delegate tasks.<\/p>\n

\u201cEditing Namaste<\/em> lets me see some fantastic original scholarship from a variety of disciplines on campus,\u201d says co-editor David Schwegman \u201913 (CLAS), a history major with a minor in human rights.<\/p>\n

Political science professor Richard P. Hiskes, director of undergraduate programs for UConn\u2019s Human Rights Institute, says the editors are \u201cexcellent students, very engaged with human rights in and outside of the classroom. They\u2019re creative, with the ability to generate other students’ interest in human rights \u2013 traits that make them good leaders, and people we can depend upon to produce an excellent issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The free journal will be available in April at the Human Rights Institute at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.<\/p>\n

Says Barringham, \u201cWe hope this issue of Namaste<\/em> 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn’s human rights journal \u2018Namaste\u2019 offers opportunities for students as both contributors and editors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":54999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-55833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 11:52:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55833"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55933,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55833\/revisions\/55933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/54999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55833"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=55833"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=55833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}