ENGL 103 A11: Case Studies in Research: Research and the Arts of Resistance

R. Jackson

In the last ten years social justice movements have taken centre stage in public life. From Occupy Wall Street, Idle No More, the environmental justice movement, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to #NODAPL, #Metoo, and #BlackLivesMatter, grassroots movements for equality and liberation have had a major influence on the social and political landscape of North America.

Right now we are living through a global pandemic and an economic economic depression. Across the continent people are practicing new ways of keeping their communities safe and healthy. We are also witnesses to a rising tide of calls to defund the police and imagine new forms of public safety that do not reproduce white supremacy. The roles of research, activism, and art are to imagine and build worlds where everyone can flourish are more important now than ever. Whether they are being championed or condemned, artists who take up issues of poverty, settler colonialism, white supremacy, police violence, climate change, and gender-based violence play an important role as commentators, witnesses, and accomplices in struggles over what the future will look like.

In this course we will think about the relationships between art, literature and movements for a more equitable world. Does the research of art and literature even matter in times of global crisis? How are writers, thinkers, and makers shaped by their material conditions, and how do they intervene to change their material realities? When is it time for patient study and when is it time to ditch the books and join others taking direct action for social change?

In this course we will explore these questions while learning about the stages in a research process, collaborating with activists, artists and scholars from a range of communities in Edmonton to produce a series of interviews for the campus newspaper, The Gateway. My approach to this course is that we miss a lot of excitement when we encounter literary texts in isolation. When we read in communities and when we read in historical and social context we can understand what we are reading more holistically and transformatively.