Recent Novels of Environmental Justice

In recent years the global Anglophone novel has emerged as a literary forum for negotiating issues of Environmental Justice in what has been called The Global South. Novelists from Sri Lanka to the United States, South Africa, South Asia, Britain, and Canada have recently explored such issues as hunger, land access, migration, environmental toxicity, indigeneity versus national identity, and diminishing resources in novels that explore the lives of some of the globe’s most vulnerable populations. The books we read and discuss are set in far-flung regions, from South Africa, India, and Oceania to what some have called “third-world North America.” Our task will be to theorize and interpret the way these novels represent environmental inequality, injustice, and exploitation and to consider what Environmental Justice might look like in these places 3 hrs. sem. (Diversity)/