Pedagogical Approaches to Language Learning through Literary Texts: A Critical Examination of Feminism, Climate Change, and Racial Justice

This thesis argues for the possibility of exploiting literature as a radical teaching material for English language classes in involving learners not only in learning a second/foreign language but also in a process of engaging critically with dominant social and cultural pre-suppositions. Focusing on a strand of thought of radical pedagogy (Freire, 1970), feminist pedagogy (hooks, 1994), and critical literacy (Pennycook, 2001), it argues for literature as a remarkably useful location for interconnecting language learning and issues of power, identity, and justice. The thesis revolves around three thematic threads—feminism, race, and climate change—which are represented through a carefully selected group of short stories and poems. Works such as Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour, Himani Bannerji’s The Other Family, and Margaret Atwood’s Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet are read not only for their thematic preoccupation but also for their educative potential. For every piece, the thesis provides detailed literary analysis, highlights its potential for evoking a sense of critical awareness, and identifies class activities that are directed at widening reading, writing, speech, and listening skills while developing a capacity among one’s own students for challenging cultural conventions. Integrating feminist, racial, and ecological theories into teaching English, this thesis demonstrates how class teaching can extend from linguistic competency to fostering reflective, socially aware learners. Texts, viewed thus, are simultaneously a site of linguistic practice and a site of critically negotiated discourse. The study concludes that literature-based learning induces the learner toward building linguistic competency alongside empathy, intercultural competency, and agency, and that classrooms can be sites of learning as well as sites of transformation.