Conference Four

Collaborating Chairs:  Keith David Watenpaugh, UC Davis — Human Rights Studies 
Bronwyn Leebaw, UC Riverside —Political Science 

How do communities employ the human rights idea in language and discourse to build solidarity within their communities and beyond? How do local human rights movements persist in the face of the perceived failure of international human rights institutions and governance to deliver justice. What is the role of popular-cultural understandings of key human rights concepts — genocide, crimes against humanity, refugees, climate justice — in building global solidarity and justice-seeking.

April 24

HMR Film Festival and discussion 6:30 PM - 8:45 PM - Cruess Hall 1002:

Aurora’s Sunrise (Armenia, 2022) Inna Sahakyan weaves together history, documentary and graphic arts in this award-winning animated feature on resistance, resilience, and genocide is a trenchant critique of the use and abuse of trauma by humanitarian organizations and Hollywood.

Prior to the film, the UC Davis Armenian Students Association  conducting the annual Armenian Genocide Memorial Day ceremony in the courtyard of Cruess Hall - candles, speeches, prayers, songs.

For the worldwide community of descendants of Armenian Genocide survivors and victims, April 24 is set-aside as a day of commemoration.  It marks the day in 1915 when the Ottoman government rounded up and disappeared 270 Armenian physicians, journalists, poets, teachers, parliamentarians, and religious leaders in preparation for the destruction through deportation and murder of 1.5 million indigenous ethnic Armenian citizens of the empire over the next three years.

Post film discussion: Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh will be joined by Talinn Grigor and Presidential Postdoc Jennifer Manoukian from UC Irvine to talk about the film

April 25, 2025

Noon - 6:00 PM UC Faculty in Conversation
International Center

Panel one: 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Anatoli Ulyanov — UCLA
Living Things: Identity Cages, Commodified Selves, and the Politics of Becoming-with
Jennifer Manoukian — UC Irvine
When Language Activism is Based on a Post-Genocide Invented Tradition
Keith David Watenpaugh — UC Davis ( discussant)

Panel two: 2:15 PM - 4:00 PM

Shamara Wyllie Alhassan — UCLA
Rastafarian Women’s Reparations as Life Ethic
Amy Argenal — UC Santa Cruz
Global solidarity with water protectors:  The limitations of human rights frameworks for environmental justice movements in Latin America
Kim Ye Dionne — UC Riverside
When rights feel distant: Civic care and a small act of resistance
Bronwyn Leebaw —UC Riverside (discussant)

Panel three: 4:15 PM - 6:00 PM
Gershon Shafir — UC San Diego
When Language Activism is Based on a Post-Genocide Invented Tradition
Bronwyn Leebaw — UC Riverside
Dear College President: Talking About Protest on Campus
Keith David Watenpaugh — UC Davis
How to wrestle genocide back from the Genocide Convention: Genocide in the Middle East and the Ethic of Comparison
Adam Zientek — UC Davis (discussant)

UC Faculty in Conversation Participants

April 26, 2025

UC Davis HMR at the URC

The HMR scholars who have been attending all the conferences and being such a vital part of our success will take part in panels at the URC

1:00–4:30 PM | 106 Wellman Hall

Moderator: Keith Watenpaugh

Jordan Alvarado
Children in El Salvador's Civil War
Deyab Syed
Memory and Denial in the Bangladesh Genocide
Ivy Schlosser
Selective Memory and Material of Erasure: The Destruction of Books in the Israel/Palestine Conflict 
Aashika Duvoor
Structural Inequities in Pediatric Neurodivergent Healthcare: Examining Racial Disparities and Human Rights Violations
Alyssa M. Dominguez
The “World’s Coolest Dictator”: Analyzing Nayib Bukele’s use of Policing and Prisons From a Black Prison Abolitionist Perspective
Fiona Ronne-Mcniel
The Mosaic Memories of Survivors of Torture: Pinochet Dictatorship in Chile
Gigi Ginocchio
Conditions For Genocide: A Comparative Study of Modern Media in Genocide
Heavenly Frazier
War and Peace and Vampires: A Survey of Human Rights within Speculative Fiction 
Karuna Sakya-Hooper 
The Role of Memory, Suppression, and Historical Consciousness in Understanding Wartime Sexual Violence in Nepal
Lauren Cegelski
The UC Davis Article 26 Backpack: Education As Survival Capital For Refugees 
Mihini Jayasinghe
Critical Consciousness in the Classroom: The Impact of Ethnic Studies on Student Success, Human Rights, and Pedagogy
Natalie Valle
Universities as Political Backraounds: The Normalization of Violence in the Lives of Students at the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, Peru (1990-1991)