Fall 2026
Screenwriting and Human Rights
Dates: September 01, 2026 – December 15, 2026Day/Time: Tuesday 9:00 AM - 11:20 AM EDT
Level: 300-Level
Certificate: Human Rights
Human Rights certificate requirement: Course taught from a perspective other than that of law or politics.
Instructor: Lisa Katzman, Bard College
Human rights, whether individual or collective, are the underpinning of much human conflict and for that reason, a foundation of dramatic art. In this course students will write a short screenplay (approximately 30 pages in length) exploring a human rights issue of their choice. As well as learning the structural elements of dramatic writing, we will critically examine—and students will give presentations— on assigned films and related readings that explore human rights conflicts from various perspectives.
More than any other cultural medium cinema has shaped and defined the post-WWII modern era throughout the globe. In spite of and because of Hollywood’s domination of the global marketplace for movies, robust national film industries developed throughout the world in the very earliest days of cinema: in India, France, Germany, then throughout Africa, South America, New Zealand, Australia, the Caribbean, among other countries and regions. The development of many national cinemas contain the seeds of resistance and opposition to western colonization, American cultural and political hegemony, and the tropes and stereotypes these ideologies engendered in Hollywood films. This is not to suggest that Hollywood lacks its own complex social history of directors, writers, and actors whose work has offered scathing social critiques of the American status quo both at home and abroad—targeting jingoism and deeply embedded forms of racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and political prejudice. In “Screenwriting and Human Rights” we will focus on films and screenplays drawn from global and American cinema that relate to human rights—from the deeply personal to the politically complex. Within the context of studying these works, students will develop their own short screenplays.
Credits: 4 US / 8 ECTS