The Routledge Companion to Literature and Social Justice is a comprehensive and multi- purpose collection on this important topic. With contributors working in various fields, the Companion provides in- depth analyses of both the cumulative and emergent issues, obstacles, praxes, propositions, and theories of social justice.
The first section offers a historical overview of major developments and debates in the field, while the following sections look in more detail at the key traditions and show how literature and theory can be applied as analytical tools to real- world inequalities and the impact of doing so. The contributors provide reviews of major theoretical traditions, including Marxism, feminism, Critical Race Theory, disability studies, and queer studies. They also share literary analyses of influential authors including W. E. B. Du Bois, Yang Kui, Edwidge Danticat, Octavia Butler, and Rivers Solomon amongst others. The final section considers future possibilities for theory and action of justice, drawing specifically from theories and knowledges in decolonial, Indigenous, environmental, and posthumanist studies.
This authoritative volume draws on the intersections between literary studies and social movements in order to provide scholars, students, and activists alike with a complete collection of the most up- to- date information on both canonical and emerging texts and case studies globally.
"List of Contributors Acknowledgements Note to the Readers Beyond Awareness: Introduction Part I: Introducing Social Justice Chapter 1: Pedagogy Advancing Social Justice through the Study of Literature: Basic Pedagogical Principles Mark Bracher Chapter 2: Literary Analysis: Social Justice: A Philosophical Introduction Nick T. C. Lu and Hue Woodson Chapter 3: Praxis: The Solitary Reader and the General Strike Andrew David King Part II: Theoretical Interventions in Social Justice Chapter 4: Feminism and Social Justice: Translating Private Problems into Public Problems Robin Truth Goodman Chapter 5: Disabled Diaspora: Transnational Models of Disability Justice Anna Hinton Chapter 7: Critical Race Theory: A Theoretical Overview Aja Y. Martinez Chapter 8: Ecocriticism: From the Wilderness Idea to Just Multispecies Futures Delia Byrnes Chapter 9: Marxist Theory Peter Hudis Chapter 10: Postcolonial Theory: A Theoretical Overview Hella Bloom Cohen Chapter 11: Bringing Theory Home: Decoloniality and the Global South Antonette Talaue-Arogo Chapter 12: A Short History of Liberation Theology: From Latin America to the United States, Palestine, and India, 1968-1989 Hue Woodson Part III: Social Justice and Antiracism Chapter 13: Praxis: Life Among the Lowly: The African American Struggle to Make a Home in America Kavon Franklin Chapter 14: Literary Analysis: W. E. B. Du Bios, James Cone, and the Black Christ: The History and Legacy of Black Liberation Theology Kevin Pyon Chapter 15: Literary Analysis: ""To Be on Fire for Justice"": James Cone’s Legacy and Cornel West’s Prophetic Commitments to Liberational-Theological Social Justice Hue Woodson Chapter 16: Literary Analysis: Navigating the Gaze: The Gaze, Double-Consciousness, and the Politics of Passing in Nella Larsen’s Passing Emily Fontenot Chapter 17: Literary Analysis: Black Futurities Beyond the Human in Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts Kristen Reynolds Chapter 18: Literary Analysis: From Politics to Ethical Aesthetics: Literary Peace Activism, Social Emotions and Poetic Justice in Australian Minorities Fiction Jean-Francois Vernay Chapter 19: Pedagogy: Challenging Racial and Religious Stereotypes through Literature Nisreen Yamany Chapter 20: Pedagogy: Examining Students’ Critical-Ethical Interruptions of Racial Discourse in Singapore Literature Classrooms Nah Dominic and Suzanne Choo Part IV: Social Justice for Diverse Bodyminds Chapter 21: Praxis: Trans Youth Movements Eli Erlick Chapter 22: Praxis: Making Sense of the Disability Autonomy and Collectivity Binary: A Review of Informal Disability Justice Pedagogy (IDJP) across Cultures Sona Kazemi and Hemachandran Karah Chapter 23: Literary Analysis: ""It Hurts, That’s All I Know"": Hyperempathy, Race and Gender Disability, and the Possibilities of Social Animacy in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower Jennifer Cho Chapter 24: Praxis: Postcolonial Feminism: Women’s Digital Activism and Its Challenges in South Asia with a Focus on Pakistan Naila Sahar Chapter 25: Literary Analysis: Re-Defining Dalit Female Identity: A Case Study of Dalit Feminist Movement and Dalit Women’s Writings Rashmi Attri and Neha Arora Chapter 26: Pedagogy: ""World""-Traveling in the Classroom as an Enactment of Critical Pedagogies Julia Reade Part V: Social Justice and Democracy Chapter 27: Pedagogy: Teaching Literature as Equipment for Living Democratically Ryan Skinnell Chapter 28: Literary Analysis: Collaging the Vox Populi: The Crowdsourced Poetics of Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Law Protest Wayne CF Yeung Chapter 29: Literary Analysis: Blasphemy, Religiosity, and Digitality: An Enchanted Pakistan Iqra Cheema Chapter 30: Literary Analysis: ""Without Inspection"" and the Poetics of Abolition Ryan Augustyniak Chapter 31: Praxis: Romania’s ""White Revolution"": A Case Study on Social Movements for Civil Rights and Democracy in Eastern Europe Cringuta Irina Pelea Part VI: Global Justice and Anti-Imperialism Chapter 32: Literary Analysis: Happiness, Social Justice, and the Bildungsroman: On the Postcolonial Biopolitics of Waiting for Happiness Jefferey R. Di Leo Chapter 33: Literary Analysis: Class-Nation, Nation-Class: Anticolonial Marxism as Justice Politics for Redistribution and Recognition in Yang Kui’s ""Newspaper Carrier"" and ""A Model Village"" Nick T. C. Lu Chapter 34: Literary Analysis: To Read for Suffering: Using the Film Burn! To Challenge Imperialism Alexander C. Ruhsenberger Chapter 35: Speak Up and Dance: The Convergence of Palestinian and African/Black Struggles in Afrodabke Ha Dong Chapter 36: Pedagogy: The 1947 Partition Archive: A Contemporary Pedagogical Resources to Teach the Rival History of the Partition of India Priyanka Bisht and Merlyn Sharma Part VII: Future Justice for a World More Than Human Chapter 37: Literary Analysis: Artificial Beings, Servitude and Rights: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun Pramod K. Nayar Chapter 38: Literary Analysis: Toward an Oceanic Taiwanese Imagery: Syaman Rapongan’s Sea Writing and Liao Hongji’s Cetacean Narrative Pei-yin Lin Chapter 39: Praxis: The Standing Rock Water Protectors: Indigenous Sovereignty as a Refutation to Extractive Settler Colonialism Jeff Gessas Chapter 40: Pedagogy: Teaching Climate Change under Capitalist Realism Claire Ravenscroft Index"
Masood Ashraf Raja was formerly Associate Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of North Texas, USA. His publications include Democratic Criticism: Poetics of Incitement and the Muslim Sacred (2023). Nick T. C. Lu is Assistant Professor of English at Marist College, USA. His work has appeared in Research in African Literatures.
