Annual Reviews

The Center's 2023-2024 Annual Review highlights our continued dedication to the issues that Sissy Farenthold dedicated her life to, with the Fall 2023 colloquium, "Reproductive Justice, Criminal Law, and the Carceral State," and the Spring 2024 conference, Disarming Toxic Empire. Further establishing Sissy's legacy, we reflect on her cenotaph ceremony and her namesake Sissy Farenthold Lecture, the 9th of which was delivered by Kathryn Bond Stockton. We also reflect on the many events that are the product of relationships across campus and across the world, like coffee chats with undergraduate students, a book talk co-hosted with the Joynes Reading Room, and lectures from interlocutors in law, government, and sociology, all equally concerned with inequality and injustice.

The Center's 2022-2023 Annual Review outlines our reproductive justice and environmental justice programming, including the launch of the Sissy Farenthold Reproductive Justice Defense Project, Dorothy Roberts' eighth annual Farenthold Endowed Lecture which traced Black women's longstanding struggle against reproductive slavery, and our spring colloquium, "Cultures of Environmental Justice". It also highlights students' community-based research and fieldwork on issues of global inequality around the world.

The Center's 2021-2022 Annual Review highlights the life and times of Frances Tarleton "Sissy" Farenthold as her work inspired much of what we did this year, including our webinar on post-Roe strategies for reproductive justice for Texans, the first of many projects of the Sissy Farenthold Fund for Peace and Social Justice. It also outlines a number of events and collaborations, including the 7th annual Farenthold lecture delivered by author and activist Arundhati Roy, a workshop in South Africa on the future of work and livelihoods, student research and advocacy on environmental and climate justice, and much more.

The Center's 2020-2021 Annual Review highlights our long-term project on human rights, social justice, and inequality, with a new focus on the past, present, and future of work. It outlines a number of events and collaborations that called for our sustained and deeper engagement with inequalities at every level, from our Fall 2020 colloquium, "Inequality, Labor, and Human Rights: The Future of Work" to the year-long activity of a number of research clusters that culminated in our Summer 2021 Pop-Up Institute, “Beyond the Future of Work: New Paradigms for Addressing Global Inequality.” The Institute provided a means for us to collaborate with nearly 70 academics, activists, labor organizers, and artists from around the world to bring a structural, interdisciplinary, and international lens to diverse forms of worker precarity.

Our 2019-2020 Annual Review highlights the fifth year in our project on human rights, social justice, and inequality, particularly but not only in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing calls to action by the movement for Black Lives. It outlines a number of events and collaborations that called for our sustained and deeper engagement with inequalities at every level: from our annual conference, "Prison Abolition, Human Rights, and Penal Reform," and our research project on essential work(ers) and COVID-19 “hotspots,” to our workshops on distribution, racial capitalism, and world-system theory, and our advocacy in partnership with Afro-Brazilian communities.

Our 2018-2019 Annual Review highlights the fourth year in our project on human rights, social justice, and inequality, particularly but not only in the context of natural resource extraction and labor. It outlines a number of events and collaborations that forced us to confront the fact that the patterns of inequality we see today are deeply rooted in historical, racialized patterns of domination and subordination: from our annual conference, "Puerto Rico in the Wake of Crisis," and the inauguration of the Michael Tigar Papers, to our report on mining in South Africa and Elizabeth Yeampierre's lecture on climate justice.

Our 2017-2018 Annual Review outlines our continued efforts to examine the relationship between human rights and economic inequality, details our first Idea Lab, spotlights fieldwork and internships undertaken by students, and explores human rights scholarship and activism across disciplines.

Our 2016-2017 Annual Review is dedicated to our friend and colleague Barbara Harlow (1948-2017). It outlines our continued efforts to examine the relationship between economic inequality and human rights, spotlights fieldwork and internships undertaken by students, and explores human rights scholarship and activism across disciplines.

Our 2015-2016 Annual Review highlights the first year of our five-year project on inequality and human rights, fieldwork and internships undertaken by students across campus, and the first Sissy Farenthold Endowed Lecture.

Our 2014-2015 Annual Review highlights our recent Ford Foundation grant, our celebration of the life and work of Sissy Farenthold, and multiple initiatives at the intersection of health and human rights.

Our 10th Anniversary Edition features a close look at what we did last year in each of our principal areas of teaching, research, and advocacy, situated within a bird’s eye view of what we have accomplished in those areas over the past ten years.

Our 2012-2013 Annual Review highlights our work supporting international and transnational human rights internships, showcasing the life and career of Frances T. "Sissy" Farenthold, and exploring the human rights movement's focus on anti-impunity at our ninth annual conference.

Our 2011-2012 Annual Review highlights our work launching a UT-hosted website for documents from the Guatemalan National Police Archive, creating an online exhibit on Frances T. "Sissy" Farenthold, and exploring the promises and pitfalls of property rights at our eighth annual conference.

Our 2010-2011 Annual Review highlights our work exploring the contested legacies of conflict with the "Aftershocks" conference, launching a working paper series, partnering with the Historic Archive of the National Police of Guatemala, and expanding the scope of the Center's working groups.

Our 2009-2010 Annual Review highlights our work expanding the human rights curriculum at UT, collaborating on initiatives that intersect human rights and the arts, and examining the effects of border walls on individuals and communities.

Our 5th Anniversary Edition highlights our work investigating the cultural and economic marginalization of Afro-Ecuadorians, exploring continuing legal challenges to the US-Mexico border wall, and bringing human rights archives to UT.

Our 2007-2008 Annual Review highlights our work reporting on Afro-descendant land rights in Brazil, examining impunity in Guatemala, challenging the US-Mexico border wall, raising human rights awareness through performing arts, and remembering the civil war in El Salvador.

Our 2006-2007 Annual Review highlights our work promoting human rights dialogue through conferences addressing women’s rights and US foreign policy, challenging detention policies at Guantánamo and the Texas Detention Center, and gathering information about Afro-descendant land rights in Colombia.

Our 2005-2006 Annual Review highlights our work developing a new strategic vision for the Rapoport Center, creating awareness of the relationship between culture and human rights in our “Representing Culture” symposium, and providing legal services to immigrants and Guantánamo detainees.

Our 2004-2005 Annual Review highlights our work stimulating discussion about immigration and outsourcing with the “Working Borders” conference, supporting the work of the Transnational Worker Rights and Immigration clinics, and funding student human rights opportunities abroad.