Early World Literature: A Restorative Justice Approach
Nahir I. Otaño Gracia and Averie Basch
This book relies on Restorative Justice (RJ) and anti-racist pedagogical frameworks to teach Early World Literatures. We begin with the premise that we need community to feel heard, we need community to be empowered, and we need community to want forgiveness and accountability.
Restorative Justice provides a different perspective to conflict resolution than what we often prioritize in our classrooms. In the context of Early World Literature, an entry level college course, RJ encourages us to consider why it is that the communities that created these texts found them so appealing and why it is that our modern communities continue to find them important. The answers vary from text to text: humans err and can make mistakes (Gilgamesh), storytelling creates healing and everyone deserves a chance at redemption (A Thousand and One Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights), poetry creates transtemporal solidarity by evoking similar feelings in past as well as present-day readers (poetry of the Tang period).
As an Open Educational Resource (OER) book, we see ourselves as part of a community of teachers and learners that want to make education more accessible to our students. Restorative Justice is all around us.
