Thinking through movies is a way to think through America. And if nowadays it's commonplace, even clichéd, to call for an American reckoning centered on what media, corporations, and academia increasingly – and profitably – brand “social justice,” should we be asking ourselves: what is social justice, anyway?

Joel Pfister places the films of Michael Moore, Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, and Barbara Kopple in conversation to probe what they teach about the scope and stakes of what's called “social justice” in the US. Rather than simplistically pigeonholing these four as “social justice” filmmakers, as if “social justice” is self-evident and fixed, Pfister shows how their critical lenses help us see beyond the constraints of this slippery category and conspicuously merchandized sales pitch. Pfister's readings unpack how their conceptually daring movies – including landmark films such as Harlan County, USA (1976), Do the Right Thing (1989), Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), and Selma (2014) – challenge us to think about what social justice could look like, and how in the future movies can engage us to entertain this question.