Subject & Research Guides: Social Justice & Community Studies: Find Books

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Abolitionist Intimacies by El Jones
Publication Date: 2022

Through characteristically fierce and personal prose and poetry, and motivated by a decade of prison justice work, Jones observes that abolition is not only a political movement to end prisons; it is also an intimate one deeply motivated by commitment and love.
Seven Days in Halifax: When citizens confronted the racists, liars and incompetents who ran their city by Robert Ashe
Publication Date: 2025

Twelve highly qualified outsiders — including a passionate Black pastor, a feisty Canadian labour leader, and a no-holds-barred journalist — spent a week in a public investigation of the city and how it worked. Each evening, Nova Scotians were glued to live television broadcasts where the 12 experts grilled local authorities. The event, called Encounter, was a one-off. But it showed how a local power structure can fail a city’s citizens — and face no consequences.
Ineligible: Single Mothers Under Welfare Surveillance by Krys Maki
Publication Date: 2021

Krys Maki unpacks in-depth interviews with Ontario Works caseworkers, anti-poverty activists, and single mothers on assistance in Kingston, Peterborough, and Toronto, and employs intersectional feminist political economy and critical surveillance theory to contextualize the ways neoliberal welfare reforms have subjected low-income single mothers to intensive state surveillance.
Inuvialuit reflections on Shingle Point Residential School: the diary & photographs of Bessie Quirt by Gruben, Ethel-Jean; Johnson, Val Marie; Kotokak, Lena; Kuptana, Lucy
Publication Date: 2023

This book contains Inuvialuit Reflections on the living history of residential schools and colonialism in their homeland, through the research and community-annotated diary of Anglican missionary Bessie Quirt. Quirt was the first teacher at the earliest residential school for Inuit children, based at Shingle Point (Tapqaq) in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. The 1929-1932 diary transcript contains 109 of Quirt's photographs.

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New Books at the Library
Explore books recently added to the Library’s collection. Updated monthly.

You can also browse the shelves in the call number ranges shown below:

D African history

E American history

H Social science research

HC Economics

HM Sociology (General)

HQ The Family. Marriage. Women

HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology

JA Political science (General)

LC Special aspects of education

Q Science biography and general history

Between the Lines Books
Between the Lines Books is an independent Toronto-based publisher of non-fiction, most of which offers a critical perspective on culture, economics, and society.
Fernwood Publishing
Fernwood Publishing is an independent Canadian publisher that publishes non-fiction books dealing with social justice and issues of social, political and economic importance.
Haymarket Books
Based in Chicago, Haymarket Books aims to publish books that deal with social and economic justice.
Verso Books
Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, publishing one hundred books a year.

Borrow from Other Libraries (Document Delivery Services)
Information on borrowing items from other Novanet libraries, and items from outside the Novanet library system.
SMU WorldCat: A Brief Guide
Information on borrowing items from the WorldCat online worldwide catalogue.

eBooks

Did you know that in addition to our print collection, the library also has many thousands of eBooks, including scholarly books, on a wide range of topics? You can find both eBooks and print books via searching the Novanet catalogue. All of our eBooks are listed in the catalogue. You can also search for eBooks directly in one of our eBook databases. There are several options for accessing and downloading eBooks. As a SMU student, staff, or faculty member, you have complete access to eBooks on and off campus.

The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism by Gerald Horne
Publication Date: 2018

Centering his book on the Eastern Seaboard of North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and what is now Great Britain, Horne provides a deeply researched, harrowing account of the apocalyptic loss and misery that likely has no parallel in human history.
As We Have Always Done by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Publication Date: 2017

In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking.
Coloniality and Racial (In)Justice in the University: Counting for Nothing? by Sunera Thobani (Editor)
Publication Date: 2022

Coloniality and Racial (In)Justice in the University examines the disruption and remaking of the university at a moment in history when white supremacist politics have erupted across North America, as have anti-racist and anti-colonial movements.
Postcolonial Whiteness by Alfred J. Lopez (Editor)
Publication Date: 2022

Postcolonial Whiteness examines the interrelations between whiteness and the history of European colonialism, as well as the status of whiteness in the contemporary postcolonial world.
Rethinking the Great White North by Audrey Kobayashi; Laura Cameron; Andrew Baldwin
Publication Date: 2011

Rethinking the Great White North offers a new vocabulary for contemporary debates on Canada's role in the North and the meaning of the nation.

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