WILLIAM PAUL SIMMONS
  • Leadership Experience
  • Research
    • Publications
    • Awarded Grants and Contracts
    • Invited Presentations
    • Applied Research
    • Human Rights Law and the Marginalized Other
    • Joyful Human Rights
  • Teaching and Pedagogy
    • Problem-Based Learning without Borders
    • Examples of PBL without Borders
    • Course Syllabi
  • Selected Awards


​Publications

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With Todd Landman, Rhona Smith, and Zhang Wanhong. Holding our edited book, Human Rights in Our Time: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Published by Beijing Legal Press.

Single-Authored Books

Joyful Human Rights. University of Pennsylvania Press.  2019. 
In popular, legal, and academic discourses a subtle but significant shift has occurred: the term “human rights” is now almost always discussed in relation to its opposite, “human rights abuses.” Syllabi, textbooks, and academic articles focus largely on abuses, victimization, trauma, and occasionally resilience. Yet, abuses or even resilience fail to encompass “human rights” or the lives of those victimized. Those victimized almost always experience a panoply of human emotions including happiness and joy, and human rights should also be discussed in the context of the most joyful of human experiences.


Human Rights Law and the Marginalized Other. Cambridge University Press, 2011 (978-1-107-01007-9).  
 
An-archy and Justice: An Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas's Political Thought. Lexington Books, October 2003 (0-7391-0703-8).

Edited Books

Binational Human Rights: The U.S.-Mexico Experience.  Co-Editor with Carol Mueller.  University of Pennsylvania Press.  2014 (978-0-8122-4628-5). 

Human Rights in Our Time: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Co-Editor with Todd Landman and Rhona Smith. Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.  Originally Published in Chinese.  

Current Book Projects


Human Rights Conversations: An Introduction to Human Rights Practice. Under Contract with Routledge, Lead Editor with Sheila B. Keetharuth, Rhona Smith, Semere Kesete, Devorah Wainer, Leonard Hammer, Elisa Marchi, and Asya El-Meehy. Expected Publication 2023. Textbook based on over 120 testimonies from human rights stakeholders on the ground.  

The Ignorance of Human Rights.  Book Manuscript. To be completed by early 2023.
 

Journal Articles 

2021                "The Sustainability-Peace Nexus in Crisis Contexts:  How the Rohingya Escaped the Ethnic Violence in
                         Myanmar but Are Now Trapped into Environmental Challenges in Bangladesh” Sustainability Science.
                         April: 1-13. With Saleh Ahmed, Saleemul Huq, and Rashed Chowdhury.
 
                        “Facilitated Communication, Neurodiversity, and Human Rights” Human Rights Quarterly 43: 138-167, with
                        Janyce Boynton and Todd Landman.
 
2020               “The Gendered Effects of Local Immigration Enforcement: Latinas’ Social Isolation in Chicago, Houston, Los
                         Angeles, and Phoenix” International Migration Review. 2020. With Cecilia Menjívar and Elizabeth Salerno
                         Valdez.

 
2019                 “Problem-Based Learning beyond Borders: Impact and Potential for University-Level Human Rights
                          Education” in Journal of Human Rights 18 (3): 280-292.
 
2018                 “Border Crossings and the Legacy of Sexual Conquest in the Age of Neoliberalism in the Sonoran Desert”
                         In International Journal of Feminist Politics. 20 (3):1-18. With Michelle Téllez and Mariana del Hierro. 

                          Immigration Enforcement, the Racialization of Legal Status, and Perceptions of the Police: Latinos in
                          Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Phoenix in Comparative Perspective” DuBois Review 15 (1): 107-128.
                          With Cecilia Menjívar, Daniel Alvord, and Elizabeth Salerno Valdez.
 
2015                 “Moments of Negation, Duration, and Human Rights Law without Judges” Teoria e Critica della
                         Regolazione Sociale
2: 79-96.
 
                         “Privatization of Prisons in Israel and Beyond: A Per Se Violation of the Human Right to Dignity” Santa
                         Clara Journal of International Law
13 (2): 487-515. With Leonard Hammer.
 
                         “Violence and Vulnerability of Migrants in Drop Houses in Arizona: The Predictable Outcome of a Chain
                         Reaction of Violence.”  Violence Against Women 21 (5): 551-570. With Michelle Téllez and Cecilia Menjívar.
 
 2012                “Culpability, Social Triage, and Structural Violence in the Aftermath of Katrina” Perspectives on Politics 10:
                         675-686. With Monica J. Casper.
 
2008               “Enrique Dussel and the Individualized Saturated Other.” Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture, 43: 26-
                         37.   
 
2007                "Liability of Secondary Actors under the Alien Tort Statute: Aiding and Abetting and Acquiescence to
                         Torture in the Context of the Femicides of Ciudad Juárez.” Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal
                         10: 88-140.
 
2006               “Remedies for the Women of Ciudad Juárez through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.” The
                         Journal of International Human Rights
4 (3), (Spring): 492-517.
 
                         “Concrete Abstractions and the Rights of Man.” Subject Matters 3(1): 113-20.
 
2005                “Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories among African Americans:  A Comparison of Elites and Masses.” Social
                          Science Quarterly
86 (3), (September): 582-98. With Sharon K. Parsons.
 
2003                “The Determinants of Satisfaction and Turnover among Nursing Assistants: The Results of a Statewide
                          Survey.” Journal of Gerontological Nursing 29 (3): 51-8.  With Sharon K. Parsons, Katherine Penn, and
                          Melanie Furlough.
 
2000                “Zionism, Place, and the Other: Toward a Levinasian International Relations.” Philosophy in the
                           Contemporary World
7 (1), (Spring): 21-25.
 
1999                  “The Third: Levinas's Theoretical Move from An-archical Ethics to the Realm of Justice and Politics.”
                          Philosophy and Social Criticism 25 (6): 85-106.
 
                        “Testing the Grapevine: An Analysis of Conspiracy Theories in the African-American Community.”
                        Sociological Spectrum 19 (2), (1999): 201-222. With Sharon Parsons, John Kilburn, and Frankie Shinhoster.
     
                        “Re-examining the Racial Threat Hypothesis: Black Voter Registration in Louisiana, 1975-1996.” The Journal
                        of Black Studies
29 (6), (1999): 755-770.  With William Arp, III and Christopher E. Cottrell.


Book Chapters 

2022            “Localizing International Human Rights Norms through Participatory Video with People Affected by Leprosy
                     in Niger, Nigeria, and Mozambique” in Human Rights at the Intersections, edited by Anthony Chase, Sofia
                     Gruskin, and Pardis Mahdavi. Forthcoming from IB Taurus. With Yohanna Abdou, Shehu Sarkin Fada, Paulo
                     E. Hansine
, and Jone A. José.
 
2021             “Terror, Nihilism, and Joy: Reconsidering Camus’s Confrontation with Political Violence” in Welcoming the
                     Other: Student, Stranger, and Divine
, edited by N. Susan Laehn and Thomas R. Laehn. With John Randolph
                      LeBlanc.
 
2018             “Critical Ethnography and Human Rights Research” Research Methods in Human Rights, edited by Rhona
                     Smith and Lee McConnell, Routledge. (ISBN: 1-138-94323-0) With Lindsey Feldman.
 
2017              “The Human Right to Dignity and Commodification of Prisoners: Considering Worldwide Challenges to
                      Prison Privatization.” In Privatization, Vulnerability, and Social Responsibility, edited by Martha Fineman,
                      Ulrika Andersson and Titti Mattsson. Routledge (ISBN: 1472489071). With Leonard Hammer.
 
                      “Reproductive Justice and Resistance at the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” in Radical Reproductive Justice:
                       Foundation, Theory, Practice, Critique
  (ISBN: 9781558614376), edited by Loretta Ross, et al. with Anna
                       Ochoa O’Leary.
 
                       “Levinas’ Divine Comedy and Archbishop Romero’s Joyful Laughter” in Comedy Begins with Our Simplest
                       Gestures: Levinas, Ethics, and Humor
, ed. by Brian Bergen-Aurand. Duquesne University Press.  
 
2014               “Accounting for Death: Infant Mortality, the MDGs, and Women’s (Dis)Empowerment” in Counting on
                       Marilyn Waring
: New Advances in Feminist Economics, Edited by Margunn Bjørnholt and Ailsa McKay
                       Demeter Press.  With Monica J. Casper.
 
                       “Sexual Violence against Migrant Women and Children in Arizona” In Binational Human Rights: The U.S.-
                       Mexico Experience
.  Co-Editor with Carol Mueller, The University of Pennsylvania Press. With Michelle
                       Téllez.
 
                       “Introduction” In Binational Human Rights: The U.S.-Mexico Experience.  Co-Editor with Carol Mueller.  The
                       University of Pennsylvania Press. With Carol Mueller.
 
                       “Binational Human Rights Violations, Structural Violence, and Pessimism” In Binational Human Rights: The
                       U.S.-Mexico Experience
. The University of Pennsylvania Press.
 
2012               “Making the Teaching of Social Justice Matter” in Real Social Science. Cambridge University Press, edited by
                       Bent Flyvbjerg, Todd Landman, and Sanford Schram.  2012.
 
2010               “Introduction” in Human Rights in Our Time: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Co-Editor with Todd Landman
                        and Rhona Smith. Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human
                        Rights and Humanitarian Law.  Originally Published in Chinese, Beijing: China Legal Publishing House. 
                        With Todd Landman and Rhona Smith.
 
                       “Innovative Transnational Remedies for the Women of Ciudad Juárez.” In Terrorizing Women: A
                       Cartography of Feminicide in the Américas
 edited by Cynthia Bejerano and Rosa-Linda Fregoso. Duke
                       University Press.  With Rebecca Coplan. Translated as “Recursos innovadores transnacionales para las
                       mujeres de Ciudad Juárez” in Feminicidio en América Latina, Rosa-Linda Fregoso Coordinadora,                     
                       Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Cicencias y Humanides, 2011.
 
2004            “Levinas and Voegelin on the “Foundations” of Politics and Ethics: Transcendence and Immanence
                      Reconsidered.” In Cecil L. Eubanks and Peter A. Petrakis, eds. Recovery without Nostalgia: Voegelin and the
                      Postmodern Question of Foundations.
The University of Missouri Press. 
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  • Leadership Experience
  • Research
    • Publications
    • Awarded Grants and Contracts
    • Invited Presentations
    • Applied Research
    • Human Rights Law and the Marginalized Other
    • Joyful Human Rights
  • Teaching and Pedagogy
    • Problem-Based Learning without Borders
    • Examples of PBL without Borders
    • Course Syllabi
  • Selected Awards