What is the power of a work of literature to affect readers’ perceptions of their worlds? How might literature contribute to or impede racial literacy? Engaging both recent trends and older schools of thought in literary criticism, Paula Moya elaborates the social psychological concept of schema as a valuable tool for analyzing the creation of literary and social meaning. Drawing from literary and real world examples ranging from Ferguson, Missouri to Morrison’s A Mercy, Moya argues that literature remains a powerful tool and important actor in a world in which racial literacy will be more important than ever.
Paula Moya is the author of The Social Imperative: Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary Criticism (Stanford UP 2016) and Learning From Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles (UC Press 2002) and has co-edited three collections of original essays, Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century (W.W. Norton, 2010), Identity Politics Reconsidered (Palgrave 2006) and Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism (UC Press 2000).
Moya has served as the Director of the Program of Modern Thought and Literature, Vice Chair of the Department of English, and the Director of the Undergraduate Program of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.
Thanks to the Center for Advanced Study for this information item.
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