The idea of universal, inalienable rights has become the dominant moral language of our time, with Human Rights having become a source of inspiration to oppressed individuals and groups across the world, and a rallying cry for a global civil society. The ideas shaping contemporary Human Rights, however, have deep historical roots, drawing on religious and secular ethics, morality and social justice in various societies and cultures. This course asks: how did all of this come to be? Are Human Rights the product of a peculiarly European heritage, or is its moral, cultural, and political basis far wider than this? Did human rights serve as a 'civilizing' mask for colonialism, and what has been the relationship between decolonisation and the question of rights? Exploring these and other questions, the course investigates Human Rights not only as theories embodied in texts, but as practices embedded in specific historical contexts, and works towards a genealogy of human rights. Taking a thematic and chronological approach, the course first explores notions of rights across a range of religious and cultural traditions. We examine the impact of the American and French Revolutions on the advancement of ideas about human rights, and how other threads such as the Cold War, Apartheid, and the ‘War on Terror’ have undermined them. We also examine the impacts of slavery, imperialism, war, and genocide, as well as responses to them, and global movements such as civil, indigenous, women’s, and minority rights, and the rise of the modern human rights movement.