Deans, Tom. "Shifting Locations, Genres, and Motives: An Activity Theory Analysis of Service-Learning Writing Pedagogies." The Locations of Composition. Ed. Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. Albany: State U of New York P, 2007. 289-306.
Deans argues that looking at the location of writing (classroom to community agency) is less useful than looking at the activity system of writing because we then begin "thinking about the interactions and contradictions between two activity systems (the university and the community partner organization)" (290). An activity system is like a discourse community, but one that is perpetually dynamic, in flux (291). The activity system provides a vocabulary for analysis of relationships: tools/genres, subjects, rules, objects/motives, community, and division of labor. This type of analysis is more multi-faceted than place-based analysis: e.g., genre analysis, looking at explicit and implicit motives of multiple agents, the contradictions from student perspectives (working for a grade vs. working for agency's betterment) and faculty perspectives (the agency/power of professor vs. that of the site supervisor).
Monday, August 20, 2007
Brooke and McIntosh
Brooke, Robert, and Jason McIntosh. "Deep Maps: Teaching Rhetorical Engagement through Place-Based Education." The Locations of Composition. Ed. Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. Albany: State U of New York P, 2007. 131-149.
Brooke and McIntosh suggest that having students draw deep maps is useful as a pre-writing/brainstorming activity, especially in terms of getting students to engage in place-based writing and address civic matters in real writing projects. They write, "Initially, writers need to become accustomed to seeing themselves in a place, that is, they need to become aware of the various ways location (literal and mental) creates their understanding of landscape, culture, class, race, and gender, and surrounds them with local issues and local possibilities" (132). Writing about place is a starting point, they say, toward project-based civic writing. The student becomes personally invested in place. Similar to what I've been calling a pedagogy of person-in-place. Mapping is "an exploratory moment that supported a personal context for place-conscious writing" (140). Place is part of rhetoric: "where to locate one's argument" (147). "Once that link is made, then a whole new energy for writing becomes possible--and a whole new energy for shaping the state of the places we will live, and the kinds of places we can help those locations become" (147).
Brooke and McIntosh suggest that having students draw deep maps is useful as a pre-writing/brainstorming activity, especially in terms of getting students to engage in place-based writing and address civic matters in real writing projects. They write, "Initially, writers need to become accustomed to seeing themselves in a place, that is, they need to become aware of the various ways location (literal and mental) creates their understanding of landscape, culture, class, race, and gender, and surrounds them with local issues and local possibilities" (132). Writing about place is a starting point, they say, toward project-based civic writing. The student becomes personally invested in place. Similar to what I've been calling a pedagogy of person-in-place. Mapping is "an exploratory moment that supported a personal context for place-conscious writing" (140). Place is part of rhetoric: "where to locate one's argument" (147). "Once that link is made, then a whole new energy for writing becomes possible--and a whole new energy for shaping the state of the places we will live, and the kinds of places we can help those locations become" (147).
Hesford
Hesford, Wendy S. "Global/Local Labor Politics and the Promise of Service Learning." Radical Relevance: Toward a Scholarship of the Whole Left. Ed. Laura Gray-Rosendale and Steven Rosendale. Albany: State U of New York P, 2005. 183-202.
Hesford reviews the implications of the globalized and corporatized university, including consumerist models of curriculum and pedagogy, calling upon her audience to interrogate how ASL accepts/rejects exploitative labor practices. ASL provides labor as well as value for both higher ed and community agencies and we should be aware, Hesford writes, of how specific programs impact labor and material realities. E.g., she explains how her students provided volunteer labor to a shelter that had formerly relied upon public moneys. Do ASL programs facilitate decreased state funding for social services? Further, one year the shelter failed to garner a grant for funding labor during the summer (when it felt the lack of student labor). Hesford wonders if her students would be better off protesting at the state capital or continuing to provide the services/labor. Unpaid interships at private corporations effect local economies, providing free labor for the company and taking paid work from an employee. ASL, likewise, enters into labor-based relationship with worksites. Further, the service work remains feminized--a dynamic we often fail to question. Being reflexive isn't enough, for reflexivity doesn't necessarily address these material relationships.
Hesford reviews the implications of the globalized and corporatized university, including consumerist models of curriculum and pedagogy, calling upon her audience to interrogate how ASL accepts/rejects exploitative labor practices. ASL provides labor as well as value for both higher ed and community agencies and we should be aware, Hesford writes, of how specific programs impact labor and material realities. E.g., she explains how her students provided volunteer labor to a shelter that had formerly relied upon public moneys. Do ASL programs facilitate decreased state funding for social services? Further, one year the shelter failed to garner a grant for funding labor during the summer (when it felt the lack of student labor). Hesford wonders if her students would be better off protesting at the state capital or continuing to provide the services/labor. Unpaid interships at private corporations effect local economies, providing free labor for the company and taking paid work from an employee. ASL, likewise, enters into labor-based relationship with worksites. Further, the service work remains feminized--a dynamic we often fail to question. Being reflexive isn't enough, for reflexivity doesn't necessarily address these material relationships.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Weisser
Weisser, Christian R. Moving Beyond Academic Discourse: Composition Studies and the Public Sphere. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois U.P., 2002.
Weisser narrates a brilliant, accessible, clearly articulated history of the field in his early chapters, suggesting that student-centered expressive models of process begat social constructivist views of language and knowledge, which in turn begat the social turn, which is now evolving into emphases on public writing. He sees service learning and community-based courses (forays in the public sphere) as the next step in this evolution.
Mature evolution as a field, he says, means looking toward theories from other disciplines and Weisser relies on social theory. He theorizes the notion of the "public sphere," leaning heavily on Habermas. Habermas, Weisser says, defined public sphere as a "discursive domain where private individuals debate social and political issues" in a setting apart from the state (47). Habermas bought into the myths of freedom and free and equal participation (everybody debates rationally regardless of identity) as well as the notion that the public sphere could take up issues of "common concern" (universal). Inns, coffeehouses, and pubs flourished in mid-18th century but began to decline after the liberal revolutions late in that century--many critics suggest the public sphere's been in decline ever since, a decline fostered by industrialism and the growth of capitalism. Nancy Fraser and others critiqued Habermas' notions for being idealized. Fraser argued that what is "public" and what is "common concern" are rhetorical notions (e.g., wife battering) (85).
Drawing on (critiques of) Habermas, Weisser develops his own model of public writing. Public writing happens in a particular cultural setting and is by extension shaped by context and ideology (96-97). Yes, there's a context for a given debate, but it's more than that. We also need to teach things like who has been and still is excluded from the debate: the "need to consider how ideology, racism, classism, and sexism have played significant roles" (99). Acknowledge "imbalances of power" in the debate (103). Small, local, specialized venues count--it's not just letters to the editor of a major newspaper--a local venue counts as well (104-105). The public isn't a monolithic concept; public writing need not be directed to a "diverse audience" or a "general audience." Social change happens at the local level with special interest groups who organize and mobilize one another and create "subaltern counterpublics" (106) before and during the process of reaching out. Weisser further complicates Habermas' notion of "common concern" and "public" issue as well, reiterating that a public issue need not be on the entire public's radar. In fact, it might not be (sexual orientation, e.g.) (107-109).
Finally, he critiques the over-emphasis on public writing as something that's geared toward changing minds. He returns to Habermas's notion that public sphere is apart from the state. Not so, he says, noting that public writing ought to engage the government and other apparatuses. It's not just about pontificating in a park or on an editorial page. Affect change in public policy. Contrary to Habermas's conception, affecting actual material change is part of the public sphere. "Students' public writing can have significant, tangible, immediate results if it is directed toward publics where both debate and decision making are central goals. As facilitators of public writing, it is important that we help students locate strong publics where their voices can lead to action" (111).
Weisser narrates a brilliant, accessible, clearly articulated history of the field in his early chapters, suggesting that student-centered expressive models of process begat social constructivist views of language and knowledge, which in turn begat the social turn, which is now evolving into emphases on public writing. He sees service learning and community-based courses (forays in the public sphere) as the next step in this evolution.
Mature evolution as a field, he says, means looking toward theories from other disciplines and Weisser relies on social theory. He theorizes the notion of the "public sphere," leaning heavily on Habermas. Habermas, Weisser says, defined public sphere as a "discursive domain where private individuals debate social and political issues" in a setting apart from the state (47). Habermas bought into the myths of freedom and free and equal participation (everybody debates rationally regardless of identity) as well as the notion that the public sphere could take up issues of "common concern" (universal). Inns, coffeehouses, and pubs flourished in mid-18th century but began to decline after the liberal revolutions late in that century--many critics suggest the public sphere's been in decline ever since, a decline fostered by industrialism and the growth of capitalism. Nancy Fraser and others critiqued Habermas' notions for being idealized. Fraser argued that what is "public" and what is "common concern" are rhetorical notions (e.g., wife battering) (85).
Drawing on (critiques of) Habermas, Weisser develops his own model of public writing. Public writing happens in a particular cultural setting and is by extension shaped by context and ideology (96-97). Yes, there's a context for a given debate, but it's more than that. We also need to teach things like who has been and still is excluded from the debate: the "need to consider how ideology, racism, classism, and sexism have played significant roles" (99). Acknowledge "imbalances of power" in the debate (103). Small, local, specialized venues count--it's not just letters to the editor of a major newspaper--a local venue counts as well (104-105). The public isn't a monolithic concept; public writing need not be directed to a "diverse audience" or a "general audience." Social change happens at the local level with special interest groups who organize and mobilize one another and create "subaltern counterpublics" (106) before and during the process of reaching out. Weisser further complicates Habermas' notion of "common concern" and "public" issue as well, reiterating that a public issue need not be on the entire public's radar. In fact, it might not be (sexual orientation, e.g.) (107-109).
Finally, he critiques the over-emphasis on public writing as something that's geared toward changing minds. He returns to Habermas's notion that public sphere is apart from the state. Not so, he says, noting that public writing ought to engage the government and other apparatuses. It's not just about pontificating in a park or on an editorial page. Affect change in public policy. Contrary to Habermas's conception, affecting actual material change is part of the public sphere. "Students' public writing can have significant, tangible, immediate results if it is directed toward publics where both debate and decision making are central goals. As facilitators of public writing, it is important that we help students locate strong publics where their voices can lead to action" (111).
Bickford and Reynolds
Bickford, Donna M., and Nedra Reynolds. "Activism and Service Learning: Reframing Volunteerism as Acts of Dissent." Pedagogy 2 (2002): 229-252.
Bickford and Reynolds notice that their service learning students often express enthusiasm for volunteering but a negative, resistant attitude toward activism. They wonder what the causes and implications of this trend might be. They critique the ASL literature as well as practices for not emphasizing two specific kinds of context: history and geography: "too often infused with the volunteer ethos...that ignores the structural reasons to help others" (230).
They mean to theorize activism as a complementary pedagogy/practice to ASL. In ASL "relationships are clearly based on difference" (237)--us and them, university and agency, but move toward a difference-erasing community-unity. "Activism argues for relationships based on connection" (237): grassroots organizing where various agents agitate for an issue, "a shared goal of creating social change" (237), but acknowledges that difference matters.
Change student anti-activism perception by teaching the history of consciousness-raising (eg, feminism) and organizing (Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, everyday struggles). Get students engaged critically with the politics of space and place via critical methodologies like mapping neighborhoods and even just the campus. They want to "...keep the emphasis of their work on the structural formations of communities rather on their individual members" (243). Give students choice in determining projects--even if they choose acts of dissent in support of causes we despise.
Some thoughts: At what point does place-based pedagogy become de-humanized? I wonder this about Reynolds other work too--while I'm drawn to the materiality of place, I want to revise this into a person-in-place pedagogy. Kind of like a text-in-context pedagogy. That person-in-place model (Loeb is useful here) seems to be the most material rhetoric of all. Does volunteering have an affective component ("happy talk") that activism lacks? After all, activism has an agonistic component (working class) that's at odds with middle-class decorum of higher ed.
Bickford and Reynolds notice that their service learning students often express enthusiasm for volunteering but a negative, resistant attitude toward activism. They wonder what the causes and implications of this trend might be. They critique the ASL literature as well as practices for not emphasizing two specific kinds of context: history and geography: "too often infused with the volunteer ethos...that ignores the structural reasons to help others" (230).
They mean to theorize activism as a complementary pedagogy/practice to ASL. In ASL "relationships are clearly based on difference" (237)--us and them, university and agency, but move toward a difference-erasing community-unity. "Activism argues for relationships based on connection" (237): grassroots organizing where various agents agitate for an issue, "a shared goal of creating social change" (237), but acknowledges that difference matters.
Change student anti-activism perception by teaching the history of consciousness-raising (eg, feminism) and organizing (Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, everyday struggles). Get students engaged critically with the politics of space and place via critical methodologies like mapping neighborhoods and even just the campus. They want to "...keep the emphasis of their work on the structural formations of communities rather on their individual members" (243). Give students choice in determining projects--even if they choose acts of dissent in support of causes we despise.
Some thoughts: At what point does place-based pedagogy become de-humanized? I wonder this about Reynolds other work too--while I'm drawn to the materiality of place, I want to revise this into a person-in-place pedagogy. Kind of like a text-in-context pedagogy. That person-in-place model (Loeb is useful here) seems to be the most material rhetoric of all. Does volunteering have an affective component ("happy talk") that activism lacks? After all, activism has an agonistic component (working class) that's at odds with middle-class decorum of higher ed.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Flower
Flower, Linda. "Intercultural Inquiry and the Transformation of Service." College English 65 (2002): 181-201.
Flower says ASL students need to INQUIRE instead of coming in ready to ACT. The renewed interest in civic engagement in the 90s brought with it a desire to critique (183) that sometimes sacrificed the agency of community members due to "the political certainty of critique or of feet-first activism" (184). Instead, built mutual, collaborative understandings of problems--even if our own assumptions are challenged or called into question. Process is messy but helps us move from a 'service' or 'critique' model into one that's genuinely collaborative. She writes, "My argument is this: the conflicts and contradictions of community outreach call for an intercultural inquiry that not only seeks more diverse rival readings, but constructs multivoiced negotiated meanings in practice" (182).
Flower says ASL students need to INQUIRE instead of coming in ready to ACT. The renewed interest in civic engagement in the 90s brought with it a desire to critique (183) that sometimes sacrificed the agency of community members due to "the political certainty of critique or of feet-first activism" (184). Instead, built mutual, collaborative understandings of problems--even if our own assumptions are challenged or called into question. Process is messy but helps us move from a 'service' or 'critique' model into one that's genuinely collaborative. She writes, "My argument is this: the conflicts and contradictions of community outreach call for an intercultural inquiry that not only seeks more diverse rival readings, but constructs multivoiced negotiated meanings in practice" (182).
Deans
Deans, Thomas. Writing Partnerships: Service Learning in Composition. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000.
A comprehensive overview of relationship between composition and ASL. Sees ASL as an extension of Dewey's experiential ed. and pragmatism and Freire's notion of critical praxis. Classifies ASL projects into three camps: writing FOR the community (often genre-based, with the advantage of providing real rhetorical situations), ABOUT the community (reflection-based, emphasis on some combination of personal growth and analysis), and WITH the community (encompassing collaborative-based work often involving hybrid discourses). Deans resists advocating one of these, instead suggesting we use his schema as a heuristic for asking what our own pedagogical goals are.
A comprehensive overview of relationship between composition and ASL. Sees ASL as an extension of Dewey's experiential ed. and pragmatism and Freire's notion of critical praxis. Classifies ASL projects into three camps: writing FOR the community (often genre-based, with the advantage of providing real rhetorical situations), ABOUT the community (reflection-based, emphasis on some combination of personal growth and analysis), and WITH the community (encompassing collaborative-based work often involving hybrid discourses). Deans resists advocating one of these, instead suggesting we use his schema as a heuristic for asking what our own pedagogical goals are.
Cushman, b
Cushman, Ellen. "The Public Intellectual, Service Learning, and Activist Research." College English 61 (1999): 328-336.
Cushman argues that we should broaden our conception of 'public intellectual' to account for the democratic gains being made by ASL and activist research initiatives. Instead of just looking at NYTimes editorialists as public intellectuals, we should consider the literacy workers, activists on the ground, volunteers, etc. to also be part of that group.
Cushman argues that we should broaden our conception of 'public intellectual' to account for the democratic gains being made by ASL and activist research initiatives. Instead of just looking at NYTimes editorialists as public intellectuals, we should consider the literacy workers, activists on the ground, volunteers, etc. to also be part of that group.
Cushman
Cushman, Ellen. "Sustainable Service Learing Programs." College Composition and Communication 54 (2002): 40-65.
Cushman argues that the best ASL programs address needs of ALL stakeholders, especially the agency. In and out model and end-of-term-research-project models leave agencies out in the cold, very often. The role of the professor is paramount: integrate teaching, research, and service and create a collaborative atmosphere of mutuality/reciprocity. Sustain attention on issues and sustain involvement at particular sites. Tells us to foreground partner needs.
"When the professor takes intellectual risks alongside students and with community partners, the professor ensures that (1) the students' and scholar's writing and thinking address community needs and writing tasks; (2) students and scholars have well-defined methodologies guiding the group inquiry and problem solving; and (3) the course materials, discussions, workshops, assignments, observations, and volunteer time are well integrated to form a unified curriculum" (44).
Cushman argues that the best ASL programs address needs of ALL stakeholders, especially the agency. In and out model and end-of-term-research-project models leave agencies out in the cold, very often. The role of the professor is paramount: integrate teaching, research, and service and create a collaborative atmosphere of mutuality/reciprocity. Sustain attention on issues and sustain involvement at particular sites. Tells us to foreground partner needs.
"When the professor takes intellectual risks alongside students and with community partners, the professor ensures that (1) the students' and scholar's writing and thinking address community needs and writing tasks; (2) students and scholars have well-defined methodologies guiding the group inquiry and problem solving; and (3) the course materials, discussions, workshops, assignments, observations, and volunteer time are well integrated to form a unified curriculum" (44).
Coogan, b
Coogan, David. "Service Learning and Social Change: The Case for Materialist Rhetoric." College Composition and Communication 57 (2006): 667-693.
"The promise is not just to make good citizens but to enable student-citizens to write for social change" (667). Actual production of rhetoric is too often neglected in favor of analysis/consumption of rhetoric by ASL programs. Coogan argues in favor of a material rhetoric model where students produce actual texts: "not just a case for rhetorical activism in service learning but a case for rhetorical scholarship in the public sphere" (670).
His material model is one of ADVOCACY: discovery, analysis, production, assessment. This process starts with getting out into the local context, inquiring into context, analyzing material conditions, producting rhetoric and evaluating efficacy. Coogan describes project in Chicago Public Schools to illustrate this model.
"The promise is not just to make good citizens but to enable student-citizens to write for social change" (667). Actual production of rhetoric is too often neglected in favor of analysis/consumption of rhetoric by ASL programs. Coogan argues in favor of a material rhetoric model where students produce actual texts: "not just a case for rhetorical activism in service learning but a case for rhetorical scholarship in the public sphere" (670).
His material model is one of ADVOCACY: discovery, analysis, production, assessment. This process starts with getting out into the local context, inquiring into context, analyzing material conditions, producting rhetoric and evaluating efficacy. Coogan describes project in Chicago Public Schools to illustrate this model.
Himley
Himley, Margaret. "Facing (up to) 'The Stranger' in Community Service Learning." College Composition and Communication 55 (2004): 416-438.
In feminst and po-co studies, 'the stranger' is one who is fetishized and/or feared, and "haunts the project of community service learning" (417). Even ASL projects rooted in reciprocity (a la Cushman) contend with power assymetries--the need to exploit, even if just to get a story (ethnography, for example)--but we nonetheless need to keep envisioning projects that foster social justice. The dilemmas have no answers, but we need to keep encountering the stranger nonetheless. The stranger "reveals the power assymetries, social antagonisms, and historical detriments that are all too often concealed by discourses of volunteerism or civic literacy" (417).
In feminst and po-co studies, 'the stranger' is one who is fetishized and/or feared, and "haunts the project of community service learning" (417). Even ASL projects rooted in reciprocity (a la Cushman) contend with power assymetries--the need to exploit, even if just to get a story (ethnography, for example)--but we nonetheless need to keep envisioning projects that foster social justice. The dilemmas have no answers, but we need to keep encountering the stranger nonetheless. The stranger "reveals the power assymetries, social antagonisms, and historical detriments that are all too often concealed by discourses of volunteerism or civic literacy" (417).
Coogan
Coogan, David. "Counterpublics in Public Housing: Reframing the Politics of Service Learning." College English 67 (2005): 461-482.
ASL, Coogan says, provides an opportunity to at once challenge perceptions of 'city' and 'other' when we frame ASL as "a jumping-off point for addressing community issues" (462). Reflection, yes, but action too--an examination of how the "private" (personal selves/individuals expressing themselves discursively) and "public" (civic spaces with all their material realities) ... "inform each other in the communities we wish to serve" (462). The discursive and material intersect in the realm of the "counterpublic"--where various agents construct oppositional posititons to convince "outsiders to think or behave differently about issues" (465).
Reframe politics of ASL such that we avoid 'personal growth' mode, which neglects materiality and social analysis and fosters "naive identification with the other" (476). Give students a space to engage in counter-public discourse, which is both rhetorical (tell stories, use language) and material (via argumentation about real issues and lived experiences). Use a "Christian love ethic that takes the invidiual (and individual development) as the primary unit of analysis" (480).
ASL, Coogan says, provides an opportunity to at once challenge perceptions of 'city' and 'other' when we frame ASL as "a jumping-off point for addressing community issues" (462). Reflection, yes, but action too--an examination of how the "private" (personal selves/individuals expressing themselves discursively) and "public" (civic spaces with all their material realities) ... "inform each other in the communities we wish to serve" (462). The discursive and material intersect in the realm of the "counterpublic"--where various agents construct oppositional posititons to convince "outsiders to think or behave differently about issues" (465).
Reframe politics of ASL such that we avoid 'personal growth' mode, which neglects materiality and social analysis and fosters "naive identification with the other" (476). Give students a space to engage in counter-public discourse, which is both rhetorical (tell stories, use language) and material (via argumentation about real issues and lived experiences). Use a "Christian love ethic that takes the invidiual (and individual development) as the primary unit of analysis" (480).
Welch
Welch, Nancy. "'And Now that I Know Them': Composing Mutuality in a Service Learning Course." College Composition and Communication 54 (2002): 243-263.
Welch says that writing/composing is crucial for any ASL course because the process of discovery encompasses not only intellectual discovery but also ethical-civic discovery. But further theoretical frames are necessary to push ASL students beyond default subject-object relationships ('I'm the agent helping a helpless object'). Goal: composing a subject-subject relationship. She turns to feminist object-relations theory, which "pinpoints a crucial ingredient in that relationship: the ability to recognize others as subjects whose lives both overlap and exceed one's own" (248).
Welch says that writing/composing is crucial for any ASL course because the process of discovery encompasses not only intellectual discovery but also ethical-civic discovery. But further theoretical frames are necessary to push ASL students beyond default subject-object relationships ('I'm the agent helping a helpless object'). Goal: composing a subject-subject relationship. She turns to feminist object-relations theory, which "pinpoints a crucial ingredient in that relationship: the ability to recognize others as subjects whose lives both overlap and exceed one's own" (248).
Green
Green, Ann. "Difficult Stories: Service-Learning, Race, Class, and Whiteness." College Composition and Communication 55 (2003): 276-301.
Green argues for the inclusion of more stories about race and class in our ASL stories (in both scholarship and in the classroom). Foreground identity markers in order to work toward social change. Dealing with race and class is a way to tell "difficult stories" and avoid side-stepping issues of power, which inevitably arise when doing ASL. Race and class help to fill in context in which service happens.
She also suggests that field notes are a better genre than a reflection journal, as notes emphasize analysis and observation, not just feelings.
Green argues for the inclusion of more stories about race and class in our ASL stories (in both scholarship and in the classroom). Foreground identity markers in order to work toward social change. Dealing with race and class is a way to tell "difficult stories" and avoid side-stepping issues of power, which inevitably arise when doing ASL. Race and class help to fill in context in which service happens.
She also suggests that field notes are a better genre than a reflection journal, as notes emphasize analysis and observation, not just feelings.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Robbins
Robbins, Sarah. "'Writing Suburbia' in Pictures and Print." Writing Our Communities: Local Learning and Public Culture. Ed. Dave Winter and Sarah Robbins. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2005. 88-92.
Robbins presents a lesson plan for teaching her first-year writing students to create photo-essays using PowerPoint. Her approach is documentary, an attempt to engage "material and visual culture" (89) in a writing-about-place pedagogy. The project is interpretive and analytical but also key for Robbins is that students engage in the production of texts, as opposed to staying in the consumption range. That is, they're reading their cities but also writing them. Her assumption is that "proactive citizens recover, critique, and create community texts that reflect the dynamic values of local and larger communities" (89).
Robbins presents a lesson plan for teaching her first-year writing students to create photo-essays using PowerPoint. Her approach is documentary, an attempt to engage "material and visual culture" (89) in a writing-about-place pedagogy. The project is interpretive and analytical but also key for Robbins is that students engage in the production of texts, as opposed to staying in the consumption range. That is, they're reading their cities but also writing them. Her assumption is that "proactive citizens recover, critique, and create community texts that reflect the dynamic values of local and larger communities" (89).
Ervin
Ervin, Elizabeth. Public Literacy. Boston: Longman, 2003.
In her 'civic literacy' textbook, Ervin offers a useful, accessible distinction among modes of civic engagement. Volunteering/service="unpaid labor willingly given" (122). Activism transcends service in a number of ways..."concerns itself with injustices rather than problems--that is, things that are unfair as oposed to simply unfortunate" and also..."activism goes to the root of those injustices...while service seeks to help victims of those injustices without necessarily addressing the larger social forces that create their problems" (125). Service often involves meeting basic needs while activism focuses on systemic change: lobbying and such. "Finally, activism needs to be accountable to a constituency, move beyond rants and accusations into the realm of purposeful action, and work with a certain level of efficiency and impact. Otherwise, you are doomed to be a lone crusader toiling away at 'random acts of protest'" (126).
I wonder if Ervin's definitions assume a progressive politics? Many people who "do" service fault individuals, not society, for social problems (some feel the homeless person "fell through the cracks" and missed abundant support systems due to personal deficiency), and for those individuals service is not helping the victim of an injustice but rather helping a deficient person. This is a larger trend in the literature of service learning and critical pedagogy, too, where the scholarship assumes that those with the aforementioned ideology haven't yet achieved critical consciousness. Such individuals are framed as 'not yet converted' and also 'simplistic' and in need of a deeper understanding. The scholarship uses "deeper understanding" euphemistically for "different ideology."
In her 'civic literacy' textbook, Ervin offers a useful, accessible distinction among modes of civic engagement. Volunteering/service="unpaid labor willingly given" (122). Activism transcends service in a number of ways..."concerns itself with injustices rather than problems--that is, things that are unfair as oposed to simply unfortunate" and also..."activism goes to the root of those injustices...while service seeks to help victims of those injustices without necessarily addressing the larger social forces that create their problems" (125). Service often involves meeting basic needs while activism focuses on systemic change: lobbying and such. "Finally, activism needs to be accountable to a constituency, move beyond rants and accusations into the realm of purposeful action, and work with a certain level of efficiency and impact. Otherwise, you are doomed to be a lone crusader toiling away at 'random acts of protest'" (126).
I wonder if Ervin's definitions assume a progressive politics? Many people who "do" service fault individuals, not society, for social problems (some feel the homeless person "fell through the cracks" and missed abundant support systems due to personal deficiency), and for those individuals service is not helping the victim of an injustice but rather helping a deficient person. This is a larger trend in the literature of service learning and critical pedagogy, too, where the scholarship assumes that those with the aforementioned ideology haven't yet achieved critical consciousness. Such individuals are framed as 'not yet converted' and also 'simplistic' and in need of a deeper understanding. The scholarship uses "deeper understanding" euphemistically for "different ideology."
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