#MeToo and Literary Studies

"Literature has always been a history of patriarchy, sexual violence, and resistance. Academics have been using literature to expose and critique this violence and domination for half a century. But the continued potency of #MeToo after its 2017 explosion adds new urgency and wider awareness of these issues, while revealing new ways in which rape culture shapes our everyday lives. This intersectional guide helps readers, students, teachers, and scholars face and challenge our culture of sexual violence by confronting it through the study of literature. #MeToo and Literary Studies gathers essays on literature from Ovid to Carmen Maria Machado, by academics working across the United States and around the world, that offer clear ways of using our reading, teaching, and critical practices to address rape culture and sexual violence, including rereading and revaluing the work of male writers. It also examines the promise and limitations of the #MeToo movement itself, speaking to the productive use of social media as well as to the voices that the movement has so far muted. In uniting diverse voices to enable the #MetToo movement to reshape literary studies, this book is also a commitment to the idea that the way we read and write about literature can make real change in the world."--