Introduction. Compositional studies in four parts -- critical theorizing and analysis on social (in)justice / Lois Weis and Michelle Fine -- Full composition and initial fracturing. Dear Zora: a letter to Zora Neale Hurston fifty years after Brown / Michelle Fine [and others] -- Deep work within a fracture. Race, gender, and critique: African American women, white women, and domestic violence in the 1980s and 1990s / Lois Weis ; Civics lesson: the color and class of betrayal / Michelle Fine [and others] -- Designs for historic analysis. Gender, masculinity, and the new economy / Lois Weis -- Designs to document sites of possibility. Participatory action research: from within and beyond prison bars / Michelle Fine [and others] ; Extraordinary conversations in public schools / Lois Weis and Michelle Fine. -- Epilogue