Welcome
Dedicated to interdisciplinary and critical dialogue on human rights, the Rapoport Center’s Working Paper Series (WPS) publishes innovative papers by established and early-career researchers as well as practitioners. The goal is to provide a productive environment for debate about human rights among academics, policymakers, activists, practitioners, and the public.
Authors from all disciplines and institutions are welcome to submit papers. We publish papers on a variety of human rights and social justice topics, and we particularly welcome papers focusing on issues and topics affecting the Global South. We are especially interested in the following: reproductive justice and sexual rights; environmental justice and climate justice; peace and nuclear disarmament; inequality; and the future of work.
Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis and evaluated by the WPS interdisciplinary editorial committee, which includes graduate and professional students from across the University of Texas. The WPS committee provides comments and feedback to authors before the paper is published online. Publication in the WPS does not preclude future publication elsewhere; in fact, many of our working papers have since been published in academic journals and edited volumes.
Each year, the WPS publishes the winning paper from the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights and the Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature, and Justice.
Our Latest Posts:
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Unequal and Under Threat: Economic Inequality and the Dangers to Environmental & Human Rights Defenders
by Scott Squires Read/download here. Abstract In many countries with large endowments of natural resource wealth, resource extraction is considered to be the primary driver of economic development and a major contributor to GDP. Often, however, natural resource extraction is environmentally degenerative and engenders backlash among indigenous communities, conservationists, outspoken members of the human rights community,…
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Fashioning China: Precarious Creativity of Women Designers in Shanzhai Culture
by Sara Liao View/download paper Read a response here. Abstract This study examines a copycat culture called Shanzhai, particularly looking into fashion imitations made and circulated by a group of women designers through digital media. It investigates the cultural transformation of labor taking place in China through the critical lens of precarious creativity. Women designers perform digital…
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Legitimacy on Trial: Transnational Governance, Local Politics, and the Battle over Gender-Violence Law in Nicaragua
by Pamela Neumann View/download paper Abstract The killing and abuse of women remains one of the most serious problems confronting Latin American societies. Many countries have passed a variety of laws intended to address femicide and other forms of violence against women. Yet the implementation of these laws has been inconsistent at best. This article…
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Mobility across Borders and Continuums of Violence: Experiences of Bangladeshi Women in Correctional Homes in Kolkata
by Rimple Mehta View/download paper Read a response here. Abstract The trajectory of violence in the lives of women engaging in transborder mobility can be plotted along a continuum where the border becomes one moment and site of violence in a series of violent experiences. Being masculinised and militarised the border becomes the breeding ground for gender–based violence. In this…
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Shining Light on Bad Practices: Re-assessing Tools for Corporate Accountability in Burma
by Kate Taylor 30 NOV 2017 Over the last twenty years, transparency has become a watchword within international policy-making institutions. Specifically, enhanced transparency has emerged as a critical component in the pursuit of corporate accountability for human rights abuses. Transparency-enhancing initiatives related to corporate accountability have proliferated enormously over this period, and their various forms…
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3 Reasons Why We Need Critical Feminist Theory More Than Ever in the Age of Big Data
by Inga Helgudóttir Ingulfsen 8 NOV 2017 This post is a follow-up to Helgudóttir Ingulfsen’s paper “#RefugeesNotWelcome: Making Gendered Sense of Transnational Asylum Politics on Twitter”, which was published in the Rapoport Center’s Working Paper Series in 2016 (available here). That paper was also the winner of the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender…
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Mixed and Clashing Patterns in Fashion and Between Shanzhai Culture and Copyright Law—A Unique Perspective for Women Designers
20 JUL 2017 Sara Liao’s article, “Fashioning China,” delves into the juxtaposition of copyright laws and creative women entrepreneurs in China. Shanzhai culture refers to the detailed-oriented reproduction of clothing, accessories, and other consumer goods. Copyright laws and governmental entities claim these goods are counterfeit and damage the economy. For the women entrepreneurs, however, these reproductions are a source of livelihood and a form of artistic expression. Shanzhai culture promotes an alternative view of their work that does…
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Comment on Violence, Mobility, and the Borders of Bengal
by Jason Cons 3 JUL 2017 Rimple Mehta’s ethnographic exploration of the violence of mobility in “Mobility across Borders and Continuums of Violence: Experiences of Bangladeshi Women in Correctional Homes in Kolkata” is a critical intervention in studies of migration across the India-Bangladesh border and of border crossing more generally. Through a study of Bangladeshi…
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Legalized Slavery in the United States Implemented Through the “Justice” System
by Courtney McGinn 26 APR 2017 The prison system in the United States equates to modern-day slavery due to its targeting of racial and ethnic minorities. There are 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails, which amounts to a 500% increase over the last 40 years. One in seventeen black men, aged between…
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