On Dignity
and just like that, we are live!
This past year I had the honor of being the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the first edition of Dignity— a human rights publication for undergraduate students in the UNC system. Being a part of this project was incredibly rewarding, and wherever or whoever you are, I hope that likewise, you are finding ways to engage in human rights discourse through both a critical and creative lens.
Dignity is the culmination of months of hard work. Coding, website building, email templates, marketing, meetings, and interviews galore. And all of it was worth it for the final product!
Mission Statement
Dignity: An Undergraduate Human Rights Journal endeavors to showcase a broad spectrum of human rights scholarship by undergraduate students in the University of North Carolina System.
The Journal fosters awareness of international and domestic human rights by publishing an annual academic journal containing high-quality, undergraduate human rights research from across the disciplines.
Dignity: Online features other forms of human rights scholarship including essays, film and book reviews, and artwork. We hope to inspire undergraduate students to see themselves as valuable contributors to human rights discourse by cultivating a community of engaged student scholars.
Dignity is a student-run publication founded in 2020 at the University of North Carolina at Asheville that invites the active participation of students and faculty across the UNC system as reviewers, editors, and contributors.
Check out our website and explore Dignity: Online here https://dignityjournal.com/
Read our first edition here: https://dignityjournal.com/dignity-journal/
Our inaugural letter from the Editorial Board
We live in trying times: a pandemic threatens the very fabric of our societies; crucial conversations around race and inequality have created a paradigm shift in private and public spaces; and democracies fray and fracture under pressures from numerous sources. What better voices to capture, analyze, and critique those changes than those of undergraduate students?
At Dignity, we believe that you don’t need an advanced degree to make valuable contributions to human rights discourse. However, there are very few journals dedicated to undergraduate scholarship, and even fewer that recognize the importance of undergraduate scholarship in human rights specifically. Dignity was created to fill this gap by showcasing a broad spectrum of human rights scholarship by undergraduate students in the University of North Carolina System. As an Editorial Board wading into new territory, we strove to create a journal that would inspire undergraduates from all disciplines to see themselves as valuable contributors to human rights discourse.
Dignity is not just an abstract title. It is also a declaration and reminder that human rights are the legal, economic, political, and social recognition of the fundamental and equal dignity of all persons. We believe that the scholarship in our first edition is a testament to the range of human rights challenges that have attracted attention across the disciplines, including protecting economic dignity of women in the workforce, preserving the political dignity at the foundation of human rights reporting, and respecting the cultural dignity communicated by language and memory of trauma. These topics are as interdisciplinary as the study and promotion of human rights, and we hope that this broad understanding of human rights continues to grow over time.
At a time when many of us could not leave our homes, we created a journal that reaches out and crosses borders. When you think of Dignity, we hope that you are reminded of what is possible: that we can envision something new during periods of unrest and unknown; that we can shape the future we want in part by giving undergraduate human rights scholarship and activism a platform to thrive. We hope that more students and faculty from across the UNC system will be inspired to join our endeavor as Dignity becomes more established and reaches a wider audience.
Being the inaugural Editorial Board of Dignity has been a tremendous honor and responsibility. We are immensely grateful for everyone who lended support to this effort, including our Advisory Board and our Chief Advisor, Dr. Linda Cornett. We are especially grateful to the undergraduate students who entrusted us with their scholarship. They are an inspiration to us all.
Sincerely,
The Editorial Board, ‘20-’21
