Julia Boyd: Denunciation and Hope

Denunciation and Hope: Teaching, Writing, and Learning Literature for Social Change

• March 27, 2025

• 3:00 - 4:00pm

• Room 230, 100 McCaul Street

• Free Admission

Presenting:

Julia Boyd, Leanne Bathazaar, Andrés Castañeda Gutiérrez, and Gillian Marr (English & Drama, U of T Mississauga)

How can teaching courses about literature and social change inspire us to transform overwhelm, despair, and rage into agency, action, and constructive labour in the face of social and environmental violences? In this talk, we’ll outline some accessible strategies for applying activist writing techniques in university literature classrooms, including course design, creative and scholarly praxis, and our collaborative work editing a “Literature and Social Change”-themed special issue of Folia, the Department of English & Drama at U of T Mississauga undergraduate journal. Together, we’ll explore just a few ways that teaching literature for social change can inspire students and teachers alike with what Eduardo Galeano called “denunciation and hope”—moving from knowledge about injustice to arts and activism for positive social change.

You can read the Folia special issue free on the journal website: Literature, Arts, and Social Change Special Edition. 

Julia A. Boyd

Julia A. Boyd is the Chair’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Public Humanities in the Department of English & Drama at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her research explores transnational writer-activism and social/environmental justice movements, alongside social justice education and community engaged scholarship. Her work on environmental, Oceanian, Canadian, and settler-colonial literatures appears in Journal of Postcolonial Writing; Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature Canadienne; Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures; and New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific (Routledge, 2020). Julia has developed academic leadership and engagement programming for both high school and undergraduate students, including Literature Is ALIVE!

Leanne Balthazaar

Leanne Balthazaar is a first-year student in the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology. Through her work as a project manager and graphic designer of the Literature is ALIVE! Literature and Social Change student journal, Leanne explores how communication can influence public perception, shape policy, and inspire collective action. Leanne is also on the organizing and marketing team of UTM’s annual Young Entrepreneurs Conference.

Andrés Castañeda Gutiérrez

Andrés Castañeda Gutiérrez is a first-year aspiring writer from Mexico in the English program at the University of Toronto Mississauga. He loves literature of all stripes and hopes to use his presentation to bring his country's troubled history of both injustice and resistance to the forefront of academic discussion outside of Mexico. His work has been published in the Folia Literary Journal “Growth” issue and the Folia Special Issue.

Gillian Marr

Gillian A. Marr is a first-year student at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She is a poetry editor for the student journal Folia, and an executive member of LIA! She has recently had poetry published in a special issue of Folia. Gillian is an avid reader and writer and intends to pursue publishing a novel.

Artwork by Joyce Chang

Joyce Chang (they/any) is a first-year student at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Their work has been submitted for project exhibitions at Sheridan College, and they take a keen interest in how art is used to promote social change.