Research Symposium

BIO

I am currently studying International Affairs with a minor in English Literature, Media, and Culture. Through serving refugees in the Tallahassee area, I have developed a passion for understanding marginalized communities. This research project developed my curiosity about literature's role in providing clarity to the injustices marginalized populations face. In the future, I plan to pursue law school in the hope of being a voice for the voiceless.

Literature and the Social Sciences

Abstract

Interdisciplinarity can be found between Literature and the Social Sciences. Rebecca Ballard proposes that storytelling can provide insight into the intricacies of structural violence as an example of this interdisciplinary relationship. From doing citational editing on her book, I developed a curiosity to understand how literature can be a method for informing solutions to injustice. This led me to my research question: How do scholars make claims about literature’s role in addressing social issues? To answer this research question, I focused on a work of environmental justice ecocriticism, a field that discusses how literature can address the environmental inequality people face. I looked at Rob Nixon's “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor”, where he discusses Arundhati Roy’s critique of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on India’s Narmada River. This research could further understanding of literature's role within the social sciences, specifically providing insight into how literary works cultivate an understanding of societal issues in the reader.

Keywords: literature, social science, structural violence