Drawing on a global history of politicized writing, this book explores literature's utility as a mode of activism and aesthetic engagement with the political ch

Why do people in socialist China read and write literary works? Earlier studies in Western Sinology have approached Chinese texts from the socialist era as port

Utopia has long been banished from political theory, framed as an impossible—and possibly dangerous—political ideal, a flawed social blueprint, or a thought

The politics of literature is not the same as the politics of writers and their commitments, nor does it concern the way writers represent social structures or

Uses of Literature bridges the gap between literary theory and common-sense beliefs about why we read literature. Explores the diverse motives and mysteries of