Book Title: Literary Studies For A Sustainable Future

Book Description

Literary Studies for a Sustainable Future: An Introductory Course with Social Justice and Ecocriticism Intersections propels readers into the 21st century by providing intellectual spaces for both learners and educators within the realism of the web of life. Learners have opportunities to become virtuosos in ecocriticism and literary studies.

Inspired by Black feminist and legal theorist Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality, Indigenous storyteller and novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, and American biologist Rachel Carson, learners navigate traditional and innovative literary studies approaches to critique and understand ancient world mythology and Indigenous literature, folklore since Aesop’s Fables to the Arabian Nights, Sappho’s poetics and the feminist romance, and early modern satirical theater of Ben Johnson and William Shakespeare.

Teaching and learning experiences throughout the book challenge readers to approach the study of nature in texts as literary criticism known as ecocriticism. The aim of ecocriticism is to decenter typical anthropocentric interpretative tendencies. Learners are more informed in literary studies as a multifaceted academic journey into how texts represent human communities within landscapes and lifeforms.

This textbook opens with role models in the literary world to introduce innovative ecocritical interpretative approaches in Black, Chicano, and Indigenous Studies. Its introductory sections provide different literary texts and modalities like short film clips, folk songs, and poetry that are informed by key terms and inquiries on the correlations between the environment and instances of social injustices. These learning opportunities potentially unveil an intersectionality between literary studies and concerns with social justice that are important to every community, like those identified in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Following these initial sections on critical theory, the book is organized in three parts with formative and end of chapter assignments for both in-class and online instruction.