HIST 797 sec. 02  REFUGEES, EXPLORERS, DIPLOMATIC ENVOYS, AND STUDENTS ABROAD

Throughout history, people have traveled. They have crossed oceans and borders. Some had passports, but many did not. After the Second World War countless exiles were “displaced by history,” in the words of one exile, denied “the right to have rights,” in the words of another.  In our seminar we will ask what are the consequence of the UN Declaration of Human Rights that gives us the right to leave but not to enter another country? How have ideas about what we owe “a stranger” changed from the Ancient World to the present?

Topics for exploration range from Diogenes in Ancient Greece who claimed to be a “citizen of the world,” to the Black Loyalists who fled the newly freed United States for Nova Scotia and settled in Sierra Leone, to the first Chinese women who arrived to study abroad in the United States in 1881, to peace envoys currently working in crisis spots across the globe for the United Nations. Soldiers, adventurers, traders, envoys, that is anyone who traveled across a border is a potential research topic, as are those who thought about borders and rights. Course meets the History requirement for Group II.