*IMPORTANT: For the course-add, please contact the TA via email and send a brief statement explaining your interest in the class and your contact information (student number) with a copy to Professor Camilo at cperezbustillo@gmail.com to get the authorization code. Thank you.

*This course would be online.

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“The early twenty-first century saw historians take a growing interest in global, transnational, world, international, and imperial history, while historians of political thought began to engage in and describe an ‘international turn in intellectual history’, a ‘renaissance in the history of international thought’, and the emergence of ‘global intellectual history’. Historians also began to undertake innovative research exploring the history of internationalism and international institutions. Both the global turn in history and the international turn in intellectual history fueled a new interest in histories of international law and international relations and fed into ongoing discussions in those fields about the way in which the past was drawn upon to inform current debates.”

Anne Orford, International Law and the Politics of History (Cambridge University Press 2021), p. 71-72

This course will explore how the history of international law and of international human rights have been intertwined, and have shaped contemporary conceptualizations, approaches, and cases throughout the world, from the perspective of the Global South. Our emphasis will be on the implications of global trends and case studies as to transitional justice and the relationship between historical memory and human rights for the Asia/Pacific region generally, and for Taiwan and East Asia specifically. Key global case studies will include Colombia, Mexico, Perú, South Africa, Sudan, Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, and Chile. Asian case studies will include Xinjiang and Tibet, Hong Kong, Tiananmen (1989), Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia), Afghanistan, East Timor, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, and Myanmar (Burma) in addition to Taiwan.

Our emphasis will be on the convergence between issues related to international law, international criminal law, and international human rights law within the context of historical processes and their contemporary impact on regional and national law. This will include in depth analysis of themes and cases that have emerged within contexts of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, crimes against humanity and state violence, and a focus on the contributions of historical patterns and developments to an understanding of contemporary challenges.

We will approach these cases and their theoretical and conceptual implications from a de-colonial, critical, comparative, interdisciplinary, and intercultural perspective. This will include an emphasis on exploration of the increasing convergence in such contexts between international law and international human rights law, as well as related provisions of international humanitarian law and international criminal law, and their impact on regional and national legal and regulatory systems. This will include cases related to legacies of authoritarian rule during the Cold War era in Latin America, Africa, and Asia as well as in the post-Soviet context.

We will also explore the potential role in key cases of processes of transitional justice and tribunals of conscience (including Taiwan’s “Constitutional Court Simulation”) as mechanisms intended to help influence popular opinion as to complex human rights issues, and how literature and culture reflect the impact of contexts of transitional justice and armed conflict.

The focus of the course will be on an overview of the state of the art of the most recent, cutting edge inter-disciplinary scholarship regarding the historical origins, development, and impact, and social and cultural dimensions of the case studies we will explore, and on the responses and perspectives that have been generated by social movements grounded among affected groups.


Professor Camilo Perez Bustillo: cperezbustillo@gmail.com
課程助教(TA)：吳虹儒（Annie Wu)
信箱：b09a01314@ntu.edu.tw