Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America

Abstract

omit them altogether, especially when they might be relevant or helpful. Rather than sociological methodologies or approaches to reading fiction, MacMillen relies more often on literary and aesthetic frameworks, and even on the analytical methods of classicists, who use ancient literary references and linguistic histories as forms of evidence. Arguing that fictional accounts of the past can be understood to anticipate contemporary social movements, MacMillen considers her sample of ‘‘stories that are telling’’ in light of contemporary social problems, such as the effects of globalization, Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, ‘‘cancel culture,’’ debates about gender nonconformity, and the profound impact that COVID-19 is having on individuals and communities. I appreciate the author’s interest not only in exploring sociological ideas and literary works that emerged during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but also in making clear that historical sociological ideas can be used to understand what is happening today. That said, I only wish she had placed W. E. B. Du Bois and others, such as Anna Julia Cooper, more firmly at the center of her ‘‘classical’’ canon of sociological theory. The whiteness of her literary sample, in combination with the largely dominant social identities of the sociological theorists she includes, strikes me as a missed opportunity. Conversations about who or what should be included in any canon are necessarily complicated and divisive, but are made likely and perhaps inevitable when invoking the idea of a ‘‘canon’’ at this moment in our collective history. As I read this monograph, full as it is of sociological observations, I couldn’t stop wondering about its intended audience. I don’t know whether literary scholars of nineteenth and early twentieth-century novels would be as fascinated as I was by the author’s commitment to exploring classical sociology. At the same time, sociological users of theoretical ideas from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—either in their classrooms or research projects—might find the author’s commitment to aesthetic and literary frameworks at times demanding and, perhaps, peripheral. While I enjoyed spending time with this author’s exploration of historical ideas, especially those that are sociological in nature, I continue to wonder whether this book is intended not primarily for sociologists but instead for scholars of literature and aesthetics.