This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the critical, aspirational, artistic, and creative forms that Justice takes in literature and the humanities more broadly.

IMAGINING JUSTICE will explore the following questions: What sorts of ethical, social, and political issues are animated by writers and thinkers who seek to imagine and build a different world?  What are the tangled roots of inequality and the legacies of sexual, racial, and economic (in)justice?  How do writers, poets, artists, and “freedom dreamers,” as Robin D.G. Kelley so memorably called them, labor to re-invent our universe and to imagine justice?  

Course topics will include: utopian and dystopian fiction; bioethics and literature; Afrofuturism; art and social justice; prison writing, poetry, and the literature of restorative and transformative justice. Authors may include: Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Euripides, Shakespeare, Kazuo Ishiguro, Claudia Rankine, Leslie Marmon Silko, Nicole Fleetwood, Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Natasha Trethewey.

This is a blended course, enrolling an equal number of students from UMass and students who are incarcerated in the Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center (WCC) in Chicopee.  As a member of this course, learning in collaboration with incarcerated students, you will be joining an international community of educators and students who are committed to dialogue and scholarly learning inside prisons and jails.   Enrollment is limited to a maximum of 10 students and Instructor's permission is required. 

Please note: Depending upon the status of Covid-19 in fall 2021, the format of this class may be adjusted to accommodate the needs of students both inside and outside the jail.  Students should be prepared for blended sessions with the jail to be taught remotely, via Zoom.